Doesn't it strike anyone as strange that the "leader" of this "freedom" movement in Iran is a US government employee and bosom buddy of the neocons? But hey, sure, it's totally legit… https://t.co/oPF7lf9Bvx pic.twitter.com/VPGFgaJDSU
— Ron Paul Institute (@RonPaulInstitut) September 25, 2022
Proxy wars
Moscow will not be intimidated by NATO and will use “any” weapons it sees fit to defend its territory, former Russian president said
Last week, Medvedev accused Western “half-wits” from “stupid think tanks” of leading their countries down the road of nuclear Armageddon with their hybrid war against Moscow.
https://www.rt.com/news/563330-medvedev-nuclear-warning-nato/
Sept 22, 2022
Dmitry Medvedev © Sputnik / Ekaterina Shtukina
Moscow may use nuclear weapons to defend its territory, including the Donbass republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, should they decide to join Russia, former president, Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. He also warned that “retired idiots” in the Western military should not contemplate strikes on Moscow’s naval bases in the Black Sea.
Writing on Telegram on Thursday, Medvedev stressed that the referendums, planned for between September 23 and 27, would definitely take place, and “the Donbass republics and other territories would be admitted to Russia.”
The former president went on to say that the Russian military would “significantly reinforce” the defenses of all incorporated territories. He added that to defend its territories, Russia may use “not only its mobilization capabilities, but also any Russian weapons, including strategic nuclear weapons.”
Without naming names, Medvedev cautioned that “retired idiots with generals’ stripes” should not attempt to intimidate Moscow by claiming that NATO could attack Crimea, a peninsula that overwhelmingly voted to unite with Russia in 2014 following a coup in Kiev.
Ex-US general warns Russia of ‘devastating strike’
“Hypersonic [missiles] are sure to hit targets in Europe and the US much faster,” he warned, adding that “the Western establishment and NATO citizens need to understand that Russia has chosen its own path” and there is “no way back.”
On Wednesday, Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, said that Washington could destroy Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, that’s based in Crimea, or its bases on the peninsula if Moscow resorts to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. He noted that it’s “very unlikely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin would order to deploy nukes.
Last week, Medvedev accused Western “half-wits” from “stupid think tanks” of leading their countries down the road of nuclear Armageddon with their hybrid war against Moscow. He also warned that the “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons,” could prompt Russia to move its military campaign to the next level.
Let us listen to both sides of the story, yes?
Pedro Sanchez says his country has faced major challenges, such as the pandemic and the consequences of the Ukraine conflict
https://www.rt.com/news/562800-spanish-pm-zombie-invasion/
Sept 14, 2022
© Getty Images / gremlin
The Spanish government has had to contend with a number of critical situations over the past few years, such as the worst pandemic in the last century, and everything but a zombie invasion, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said during an interview with TVE on Tuesday.
Sanchez explained that since he took office in 2018, his government has had to deal with an onslaught of issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the La Palma volcano eruption, Storm Filomena, monkeypox, as well as the conflict in Ukraine, and the subsequent economic consequences.
Asked about the low poll numbers for his government, the Spanish leader said he understood the frustration and anger of the people and is working to “turn these polls around.”
Of all the EU states suffering price hikes over the past year, Spain was hit particularly hard by the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and the Ukraine conflict. As reported by Spain’s National Statistics Institute, consumer inflation in the country jumped to 10.7% in July, while prices for electricity rose by 49%, fuel and gas by 23.9%, and groceries by 13.5% over the past 12 months.
READ MORE: Spain will train troops from Ukraine – media
As for doomsday scenarios, the Spanish government previously stated that it does not have any protocols in place for a zombie apocalypse, unlike countries such as the US and UK, which have officially confirmed that they have contingency plans in place.
The NATO-run Ukrainian forces, crammed with NATO mercenaries, had spent 6 months hoarding equipment and reserving trained assets exactly for this Kharkov moment – while dispatching disposables into a massive meat grinder. It will be very hard to sustain an assembly line of substantial prime assets to pull off something similar again.
This is an existential war. A do or die affair. The American geopolitical /geoeconomic goal, to put it bluntly, is to destroy Russian unity, impose regime change and plunder all those immense natural resources. Ukrainians are nothing but cannon fodder: in a sort of twisted History remake, the modern equivalents of the pyramid of skulls Timur cemented into 120 towers when he razed Baghdad in 1401.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-kharkov-game-changer
WEDNESDAY, SEP 14, 2022
Wars are not won by psyops.
Ask Nazi Germany.
Still, it’s been a howler to watch NATOstan media on Kharkov, gloating in unison about “the hammer blow that knocks out Putin”, “the Russians are in trouble”, and assorted inanities.
Facts:
Russian forces withdrew from the territory of Kharkov to the left bank of the Oskol river, where they are now entrenched.
A Kharkov-Donetsk-Luhansk line seems to be stable.
Krasny Liman is threatened, besieged by superior Ukrainian forces, but not lethally.
No one – not even Maria Zakharova, the contemporary female equivalent of Hermes, the messenger of the Gods – knows what the Russian General Staff (RGS) plans, in this case and all others. If they say they do, they are lying.
As it stands, what may be inferred with a reasonable degree of certainty is that a line – Svyatogorsk-Krasny Liman-Yampol-Belogorovka – can hold out long enough with their current garrisons until fresh Russian forces are able to swoop in and force the Ukrainians back beyond the Seversky Donets line.
All hell broke loose – virtually – on why Kharkov happened. The people’s republics and Russia never had enough men to defend a 1,000 km-long frontline. NATO’s entire intel capabilities noticed – and profited from it.
There were no Russian Armed Forces in those settlements: only Rosgvardia, and these are not trained to fight military forces. Kiev attacked with an advantage of around 5 to 1. The allied forces retreated to avoid encirclement. There are no Russian troop losses because there were no Russian troops in the region.
Arguably this may have been a one-off. The NATO-run Kiev forces simply can’t do a replay anywhere in Donbass, or in Kherson, or in Mariupol. These are all protected by strong, regular Russian Army units.
It’s practically a given that if the Ukrainians remain around Kharkov and Izyum they will be pulverized by massive Russian artillery. Military analyst Konstantin Sivkov maintains that “most combat-ready formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now being grounded (…) we managed to lure them into the open and are now systematically destroying them.”
The NATO-run Ukrainian forces, crammed with NATO mercenaries, had spent 6 months hoarding equipment and reserving trained assets exactly for this Kharkov moment – while dispatching disposables into a massive meat grinder. It will be very hard to sustain an assembly line of substantial prime assets to pull off something similar again.
The next days will show whether Kharkov and Izyum are connected to a much larger NATO push. The mood in the NATO-controlled EU is approaching Desperation Row. There’s a strong possibility this counter-offensive signifies NATO entering the war for good while displaying quite tenuous plausible deniability: their veil of – fake – secrecy cannot disguise the presence of “advisers” and mercenaries all across the spectrum.
Decommunization as de-energization
The Special Military Operation (SMO), conceptually, is not about conquering territory per se: it is, or it was, so far, about protection of Russophone citizens in occupied territories, thus demilitarization cum denazification.
That concept may be about to be tweaked. And that’s where the tortuous, tricky debate on Russia mobilization fits in. Yet even a partial mobilization may not be necessary: what’s needed are reserves to properly allow allied forces to cover rear/defensive lines. Hardcore fighters of the Kadyrov contingent kind would continue to play offense.
It’s undeniable that Russian troops lost a strategically important node in Izyum. Without it, the complete liberation of Donbass becomes significantly harder.
Yet for the collective West, whose carcass slouches inside a vast simulacra bubble, it’s the pysops that matters much more than a minor military advance: thus all that gloating on Ukraine being able to drive the Russians out of the whole of Kharkov in only four days – while they had 6 months to liberate Donbass, and didn’t.
So, across the West, the reigning perception – frantically fomented by psyops experts – is that the Russian military were hit by that “hammer blow” and will hardly recover.
Kharkov was preciously timed – as General Winter is around the corner; the Ukraine issue was already suffering from public opinion fatigue, and the propaganda machine needed a boost to turbo-lubricate the multi-billion dollar weaponizing rat line.
Yet Kharkov may have forced Moscow’s hand to increase the pain dial. That came via a few well-placed Mr. Khinzals leaving the Black Sea and the Caspian to present their business cards to the largest thermal power plants in northeast and central Ukraine (most of the energy infrastructure is in the southeast).
Half of Ukraine suddenly lost power and water. Trains came to a halt. If Moscow decides to take out all major Ukraine substations at once, all it takes is a few missiles to totally smash the Ukrainian energy grid – adding a new meaning to “decommunization”: de-energization.
According to expert analysis, “if transformers of 110-330 kV are damaged, then it will almost never be possible to put it into operation (…) And if this happens at least at 5 substations at the same time, then everything is kaput. Stone age forever.”
Russian government official Marat Bashirov was way more colorful: “Ukraine is being plunged into the 19th century. If there is no energy system, there will be no Ukrainian army. The matter of fact is that General Volt came to the war, followed by General Moroz (“frost”).
And that’s how we might be finally entering “real war” territory – as in Putin’s notorious quip that “we haven’t even started anything yet.”
A definitive response will come from the RGS in the next few days.
Once again, a fiery debate rages on what Russia will do next (the RGS, after all, is inscrutable, except for Yoda Patrushev).
The RGS may opt for a serious strategic strike of the decapitating kind elsewhere – as in changing the subject for the worse (for NATO).
It may opt for sending more troops to protect the front line (without partial mobilization).
And most of all it may enlarge the SMO mandate – going to total destruction of Ukrainian transport/energy infrastructure, from gas fields to thermal power plants, substations, and shutting down nuclear power plants.
Well, it could always be a mix of all of the above: a Russian version of Shock and Awe – generating an unprecedented socio-economic catastrophe. That has already been telegraphed by Moscow: we can revert you to the Stone Age at any time and in a matter of hours (italics mine). Your cities will greet General Winter with zero heating, freezing water, power outages, and no connectivity.
A counter-terrorist operation
All eyes are on whether “centers of decision” – as in Kiev – may soon get a Khinzal visit. This would signify Moscow has had enough. The siloviki certainly did. But we’re not there – yet. Because for an eminently diplomatic Putin the real game revolves around those gas supplies to the EU, that puny plaything of American foreign policy.
Putin is certainly aware that the internal front is under some pressure. He refuses even partial mobilization. A perfect indicator of what may happen in winter is the referenda in liberated territories. The limit date is November 4 – the Day of National Unity, a commemoration introduced in 2004 to replace the celebration of the October revolution (it already existed in imperial times).
With the accession of these territories to Russia, any Ukrainian counter-offensive would qualify as an act of war against regions incorporated into the Russian Federation. Everyone knows what that means.
It may now be painfully obvious that when the collective West is waging war – hybrid and kinetic, with everything from massive intel to satellite data and hordes of mercenaries – against you, and you insist on conducting a hazily-defined Special Military Operation (SMO), you may be up for some nasty surprises.
So the SMO status may be about to change: it’s bound to become a counter-terrorist operation.
This is an existential war. A do-or-die affair. The American geopolitical /geoeconomic goal, to put it bluntly, is to destroy Russian unity, impose regime change and plunder all those immense natural resources. Ukrainians are nothing but cannon fodder: in a sort of twisted History remake, the modern equivalents of the pyramid of skulls Timur cemented into 120 towers when he razed Baghdad in 1401.
It may take a “hammer blow” for the RGS to wake up. Sooner rather than later, gloves – velvet and otherwise – will be off. Exit SMO. Enter War.
Kiev’s attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant are acts of terrorism, Duma chairman Volodin says
https://www.rt.com/russia/562741-zaporozhye-nuclear-catastrophe-volodin/
Sept 13, 2022
“Kiev’s terrorist actions are putting the world on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. We cannot allow this to happen,” Volodin said, opening the legislature’s autumn session.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, southeastern Ukraine, August 7, 2022 © Russian Defense Ministry via AP
Ukraine’s attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant are creating an unacceptable risk, the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said on Tuesday. Moscow will act to prevent a disaster from happening, while the US does not seem to care about the potential damage to Ukraine and its European NATO allies, the speaker of the Russian parliament has said.
“Kiev’s terrorist actions are putting the world on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. We cannot allow this to happen,” Volodin said, opening the legislature’s autumn session.
While the US may be far away from the plant, “their NATO allies in Europe stand to suffer” in case of a radioactive release, Volodin noted, adding that the US government and EU parliaments are silent about the threat, but many other states around the world share Russia’s concern about the situation.
Russia has controlled Europe’s largest nuclear power plant since March. Attacks on the facility started in July, with the Russian Defense Ministry documenting more than 30 artillery and drone strikes, as well as two attempts by Ukrainian commandos to storm the plant, one during the visit of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission earlier this month. Kiev has accused Moscow of staging the shelling to make Ukraine look bad, even though its military eventually admitted to targeting the area.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, who personally led the mission to inspect the plant, said on Monday that both Russia and Ukraine are “interested” in a proposal for a local ceasefire and a security zone around the ZNPP. All of its six reactors are currently offline, due to the ongoing artillery threat.
Moscow has rejected any notion of withdrawing its troops from the area, however, with the Kremlin saying that the only discussion at this time is “about forcing the Ukrainian side to stop the barbaric shelling” of the premises.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Volodin said, “time has once again shown the correctness of the decision” by President Vladimir Putin to send troops into Ukraine in February.
Russian president and Indian PM will hold talks in Uzbekistan on Friday to discuss trade and fertiliser sales, Kremlin says.
Published On 13 Sep 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet in Uzbekistan on Friday, the Kremlin has said, as the two countries aim to boost energy and trade ties.
“There are plans to discuss issues of ‘saturation’ of the Indian market with Russian fertiliser and bilateral food supplies,” it said on Tuesday mentioning the topics of the meeting to be held on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security bloc.
“First of all, moves, aimed at boosting bilateral trade flows, will be looked at. The trade turnover reached $11.5bn in the first half of 2022, up almost 120 percent year-on-year,” the Kremlin said.
India’s fertiliser imports from Russia rose to $1.03bn in April-July compared with $773.54m in the whole of the last fiscal year to March 31, 2022, according to the Indian commerce ministry’s website.
India is looking for a three-year fertiliser import deal with Russia.
Attempts to sign a long-term fertiliser import deal earlier this year were hit by the challenging geopolitical situation after Russia launched what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24.
Prime Minister Modi has sought greater energy cooperation with Russia despite Western pressure to cut ties with Moscow following the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
“India is keen to strengthen its partnership with Russia on Arctic issues. There is also immense potential for cooperation in the field of energy,” Modi said last week addressing a virtual meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Putin will also meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit in Uzbekistan’s ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand.
India and China are key buyers of Russian energy, helping to cushion Moscow from the effects of Western sanctions and allowing the two Asian economies to secure raw materials at discounts compared with supplies from other countries.
The two Asian nations have not publicly criticised Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, despite the outcry in the West.
India, which rarely used to buy Russian oil, has emerged as Moscow’s second-biggest oil customer after China.
Refiners in India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, have been snapping up discounted Russian oil, shunned by some Western countries and companies.
The Group of Seven countries is working to cap the price of Russian oil from December 5 in an attempt to cut the price Russia receives for oil without reducing its petroleum exports to world markets.
So far, India and China have not said if they will join the price cap mechanism.
Oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri last week said India would examine the issue when more details are available. He also said many conversations and proposals were taking place and “we will see who is participating” in the price cap mechanism.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
There will be no turning back after Berlin supplied arms to kill Russians, Moscow’s envoy says
https://www.rt.com/news/562615-germany-red-line-ukraine/
Sept 12, 2022
FILE PHOTO. German multiple launch rocket systems in action. ©P/F/H / ullstein bild via Getty Images
Germany has crossed a red line with Russia by sending arms to Ukraine, Moscow’s ambassador in Berlin said on Monday. The decision undermined decades of reconciliation since the end of World War II and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the diplomat added.
“The very fact that the Ukrainian regime is being supplied with German-made lethal weapons, which are used not only against Russian military service members, but also the civilian population of Donbass, crosses the red line,” Ambassador Sergey Nechaev said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper.
He added that Berlin should have known better, “considering the moral and historic responsibility that Germany has before our people for the Nazi crimes.”
“They have crossed the Rubicon,” Nechaev stated, using an idiom for passing the point of no return.
Berlin discarded its longstanding policy of not sending weapons into zones of armed conflict to join the US and other NATO allies in providing weapons to Ukraine. The German government says it has a moral responsibility to back Kiev so it can defend itself against Russia.
Germany also joined an effort by the EU to decouple the economies of member states from Russia’s. German businesses have been relying on cheap Russian natural gas for five decades, since before the Soviet Union collapsed.
The German government “has unilaterally acted to destroy bilateral relations [with Russia] that were unique in scale and depth and had been built over decades,” the Russian ambassador noted. “In essence, the post-war reconciliation of our nations and peoples is being eroded,” Nechaev said.
According to the diplomat, economic restrictions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have resulted in a sharp increase in utility bills, a surge in consumer prices, and a decrease in real incomes in Germany. Nechaev said the “sanctions war” against Moscow is being increasingly seen as “shooting yourself in the foot” in Germany, which has already faced protests over the cost-of-living crisis. The ambassador noted that Russia took no pleasure in seeing the damage, even if Berlin has itself to blame for it.
“We believe the ongoing processes to be Germany’s domestic issue, in which we do not get involved,” he said. “And we certainly are not in the habit of delivering pompous lectures, the likes of which the West constantly makes about Russians.”
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
Covert Hybrid WW3: Hegemony vs. Multipolarity – a chronicle of the ongoing battle for the freedom of humanity, against those who seek its total enslavement. Introduction: The Shadow Wars of the 21st Century are being conducted in the terrestrial, aerial, maritime, subterranean, and extraterrestrial battlespace, which involve the maximum use of economic, political, kinetic, psychological, chemical, biological, cyberspace, and electromagnetic warfare.
The Western Deep State is seeking a full spectrum dominance; the Eastern Alliance is waging a full spectrum countermeasure. Who will win in the war between hegemony and multipolarity?
Here’s your ‘reserve currency’ thought for the day: Every US dollar is a check written on an account that is overdrawn by 30 trillion dollars.
The only thing keeping the USD from vanishing into the ether is the trust of credulous people who continue to accept it as legal tender.
How dumb is that? For decades the US has been running a scam in which it exchanges its fishwrap currency for things of genuine value. (oil, manufactured goods, and labor) But now the Biden troupe has scrapped that system altogether and divided the world into warring camps.
Let me get this straight: The sanctions are actually hurting the US and helping Russia, so the experts think we should impose more sanctions? Is that it?
The EU is sinking into recession, supply lines have been severely disrupted, food shortages are steadily emerging, and gas and oil prices are through-the-roof. By every objective standard, the sanctions have not only failed but backfired spectacularly. Can’t the Biden people see the damage they’re doing? Are they completely divorced from reality?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-ukraine-marks-end-american-century/5782901
This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
By Mike Whitney
Global Research, September 10, 2022
First published on Global Research on July 7, 2022
***
“The ferocity of the confrontation in Ukraine shows that we’re talking about much more than the fate of the regime in Kiev. The architecture of the entire world order is at stake.” Sergei Naryshkin, Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence.
***
Here’s your ‘reserve currency’ thought for the day: Every US dollar is a check written on an account that is overdrawn by 30 trillion dollars.
It’s true. The “full faith and credit” of the US Treasury is largely a myth held together by an institutional framework that rests on a foundation of pure sand. In fact, the USD is not worth the paper it is printed on; it is an IOU flailing in an ocean of red ink.
The only thing keeping the USD from vanishing into the ether is the trust of credulous people who continue to accept it as legal tender.
But why do people remain confident in the dollar when its flaws are known to all? After all, America’s $30 trillion National Debt is hardly a secret, nor is the additional $9 trillion that’s piled up on the Fed’s balance sheet. That is a stealth debt of which the American people are completely unaware, but they are responsible for all the same.
In order to answer that question, we need to look at how the system actually works and how the dollar is propped up by the numerous institutions that were created following WW2. These institutions provide an environment for conducting history’s longest and most flagrant swindle, the exchange of high-ticket manufactured goods, raw materials and hard-labor for slips of green paper with dead presidents on them.
One can only marvel at the genius of the elites who concocted this scam and then imposed it wholesale on the masses without a peep of protest. Of course, the system is accompanied by various enforcement mechanisms that swiftly remove anyone who tries to either break free from the dollar or, God help us, create an alternate system altogether. (Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi come to mind.) But the fact is– aside from the institutional framework and the ruthless extermination of dollar opponents– there’s no reason why humanity should remain yoked to a currency that is buried beneath a mountain of debt and whose real value is virtually unknowable.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the dollar was the strongest currency in the world and deserved its spot at the top of the heap. Following WW1, the US was “the owner of the majority of the world’s gold” which was why an international delegation “decided that the world’s currencies would no longer be linked to gold but could be pegged to the U.S. dollar, “because the greenback was, itself, linked to gold.” Here’s more from an article at Investopedia:
“The arrangement came to be known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. It established the authority of central banks, which would maintain fixed exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. In turn, the United States would redeem U.S. dollars for gold on demand….
The U.S dollar was officially crowned the world’s reserve currency and was backed by the world’s largest gold reserves thanks to the Bretton Woods Agreement. Instead of gold reserves, other countries accumulated reserves of U.S. dollars. Needing a place to store their dollars, countries began buying U.S. Treasury securities, which they considered to be a safe store of money.
The demand for Treasury securities, coupled with the deficit spending needed to finance the Vietnam War and the Great Society domestic programs, caused the United States to flood the market with paper money….
The demand for gold was such that President Richard Nixon was forced to intervene and de-link the dollar from gold, which led to the floating exchange rates that exist today. Although there have been periods of stagflation, which is defined as high inflation and high unemployment, the U.S. dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency.” (“How the U.S. Dollar Became the World’s Reserve Currency”, Investopedia)
But now the gold is gone and what’s left is a steaming pile of debt. So, how on earth has the dollar managed to preserve its status as the world’s preeminent currency?
Proponents of the dollar system will tell you it has something to do with “the size and strength of the U.S. economy and the dominance of the U.S. financial markets.” But that’s nonsense.
The truth is, reserve currency status has nothing to do with “the size and strength” of America’s post-industrial, service-oriented, bubble-driven, third-world-sh**hole economy. Nor does it have anything to do with the alleged safety of US Treasuries” which– next to the dollar– is the biggest Ponzi flim-flam of all time.
The real reason the dollar has remained the world’s premier currency is because of the cartelization of Central Banking.
The Western Central Banks are a de facto monopoly run by a small cabal of inter-breeding bottom-feeders who coordinate and collude on monetary policy in order to preserve their maniacal death-grip on the financial markets and the global economy. It’s a Monetary Mafia and– as George Carlin famously said: “You and I are not in it. You and I are not in the big club.” Bottom line: It is the relentless manipulation of interest rates, forward guidance, and Quantitative Easing (QE) that has kept the dollar in its lofty but undeserved spot.
The Coming Global Financial Revolution: Russia Is Following the American Playbook
But all that is about to change due entirely to Biden’s reckless foreign policy which is forcing critical players in the global economy to create their own rival system. This is a real tragedy for the West which has enjoyed a century of nonstop wealth extraction from the developing world.
Now– due to the economic sanctions on Russia– an entirely new order is emerging in which the dollar will be substituted for national currencies (processed through an independent financial settlement system) in bilateral trade deals until– later this year– Russia launches an exchange-traded commodities-backed currency that will be used by trading partners in Asia and Africa.
Washington’s theft of Russia’s foreign reserves in April turbo-charged the current process which was further accelerated by banning Russia from foreign markets. In short, US economic sanctions and boycotts have expanded the non-dollar zone by many orders of magnitude and forced the creation of a new monetary order.
How dumb is that? For decades the US has been running a scam in which it exchanges its fishwrap currency for things of genuine value. (oil, manufactured goods, and labor) But now the Biden troupe has scrapped that system altogether and divided the world into warring camps.
But, why?
To punish Russia, is that it?
Yes, that’s it.
But, if that’s the case, then shouldn’t we try to figure out whether the sanctions actually work or not before we recklessly change the system?
Too late for that. The war on Russia has begun and the early results are already pouring in. Just look at the way we’ve destroyed Russia’s currency, the ruble. It’s shocking! Here’s the scoop from an article at CBS:
“The Russian ruble is the best-performing currency in the world this year….
Two months after the ruble’s value fell to less than a U.S. penny amid the swiftest, toughest economic sanctions in modern history, Russia’s currency has mounted a stunning turnaround. The ruble has jumped 40% against the dollar since January.
Normally, a country facing international sanctions and a major military conflict would see investors fleeing and a steady outflow of capital, causing its currency to drop….
The ruble’s resiliency means that Russia is partly insulated from the punishing economic penalties imposed by Western nations after its invasion of Ukraine…” (“Russia’s ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year“, CBS News)
Huh? You mean the attack on the ruble didn’t work after all?
Sure looks that way. But that doesn’t mean the sanctions are a failure. Oh, no. Just at look at the effect they’ve had on Russian commodities. Export receipts are way-down, right? Here’s more from CBS:
“Commodity prices are currently sky-high, and even though there is a drop in the volume of Russian exports due to embargoes and sanctioning, the increase in commodity prices more than compensates for these drops,” said Tatiana Orlova, lead emerging markets economist at Oxford Economics.
Russia is pulling in nearly $20 billion a month from energy exports. Since the end of March, many foreign buyers have complied with a demand to pay for energy in rubles, pushing up the currency’s value.” (“Russia’s ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year“, CBS News)
You’re kidding me? You mean the ruble is surging and Putin is raking in more dough on commodities than ever before?
Yep, and it’s the same deal with Russia’s trade surplus. Take a look at this excerpt from an article in The Economist:
“Russia’s exports… have held up surprisingly well, including those directed to the West. Sanctions permit the sale of oil and gas to most of the world to continue uninterrupted. And a spike in energy prices has boosted revenues further.
As a result, analysts expect Russia’s trade surplus to hit record highs in the coming months. The IIF reckons that in 2022 the current-account surplus, which includes trade and some financial flows, could come in at $250bn (15% of last year’s GDP), more than double the $120bn recorded in 2021. That sanctions have boosted Russia’s trade surplus, and thus helped finance the war, is disappointing, says Mr Vistesen. Ms Ribakova reckons that the efficacy of financial sanctions may have reached its limits. A decision to tighten trade sanctions must come next.
But such measures could take time to take effect. Even if the EU enacts its proposal to ban Russian oil, the embargo would be phased in so slowly that the bloc’s oil imports from Russia would fall by just 19% this year, says Liam Peach of Capital Economics, a consultancy. The full impact of these sanctions would be felt only at the start of 2023—by which point Mr. Putin will have amassed billions to fund his war.” ( “Russia is on track for a record trade surplus”, The Economist)
Let me get this straight: The sanctions are actually hurting the US and helping Russia, so the experts think we should impose more sanctions? Is that it?
Precisely. Now that we have shot ourselves in the foot, the experts think it would be wise to shoot the other one too.
Am I the only one who is struck by the insanity of this policy? Check out this clip from an article at RT:
“Russia could earn a record $100 billion from gas sales to European countries in 2022 due to the sharp rise in energy prices, French newspaper Les Echos reported this week, citing Citibank analysts.
According to the paper, the projected income from gas sales will be almost twice as much as last year. The analysis does not take into account profits from the sale of other Russian commodities, such as oil, coal, and other minerals.
Les Echos reports that, despite sanctions and warnings of a sweeping embargo on Russian energy, the 27 EU countries continue to send roughly $200 million per day to Gazprom.”(“Russian gas revenues projected to hit new highs”, RT)
So the revenues from gas and oil sales are literally flooding Moscow’s coffers like never before. Meanwhile, energy prices in the EU and America have skyrocketed to 40-year highs.
Can you see how counterproductive this policy is?
The EU is sinking into recession, supply lines have been severely disrupted, food shortages are steadily emerging, and gas and oil prices are through-the-roof. By every objective standard, the sanctions have not only failed but backfired spectacularly. Can’t the Biden people see the damage they’re doing? Are they completely divorced from reality?
Imagine if the Ukrainians use Biden’s new artillery battery (HIMARS) to shell cities in Russia? Then what?
Then Putin takes off the gloves and shuts off the flow of hydrocarbons to Europe immediately. That’s what’s going to happen if Washington continues to escalate. You can bet on it. If Russia’s “Special Military Operation” suddenly becomes a war, the lights across Europe will go dark, homes will begin to freeze, factories will go silent, and the continent will slide headlong into a protracted and painful depression.
Does anyone in Washington think about these things or are they all so drunk on their own press clippings they’ve completely lost touch with reality?
Here’s more from an article at RT:
“Even as the collective West continues to insist – against all observable reality – that the conflict in Ukraine is going well for Kiev, major media outlets are becoming increasingly uneasy with the situation on the economic front. More and more observers are admitting that the embargoes imposed by the US and its allies aren’t crushing the Russian economy, as originally intended, but rather their own.…
“Russia is winning the economic war,” the Guardian’s economics editor Larry Elliott declared on Thursday. “It is now three months since the west launched its economic war against Russia, and it is not going according to plan. On the contrary, things are going very badly indeed,” he wrote…
In a May 30 essay, Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins also said that the embargo had failed…
As Jenkins points out, the sanctions have actually raised the price of Russian exports such as oil and grain – thus enriching, rather than impoverishing, Moscow while leaving Europeans short of gas and Africans running out of food.” (“As sanctions fail to work and Russia’s advance continues, Western media changes its tune on Ukraine”, RT)
Did you catch that part about “Russia winning the economic war”? What do you think that means in practical terms?
Does it mean that Washington’s failed attempt to maintain its global hegemony by “weakening” Russia is actually putting enormous strains on the Transatlantic Alliance and NATO that will trigger a re-calibration of relations leading to a defiant rejection of the “rules-based system?”
Is that what it means? Is Europe going to split with Washington and leave America to sink beneath its $30 trillion ocean of red ink?
Yes, that’s exactly what it means.
Uncle Sam’s 30-Year Bender
Proponents of Washington’s proxy war have no idea of the magnitude of their mistake or how much damage they are inflicting on their own country. The Ukraine debacle is the culmination of 30 years of bloody interventions that have brought us to a tipping point where the nation’s fortunes are about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. As the dollar-zone shrinks, standards of living will plunge, unemployment will soar, and the economy will go into a downward-death spiral.
Washington has greatly underestimated its vulnerability to catastrophic geopolitical blowback that is about to bring the New American Century to a swift and excruciating end.
A wise leader would do everything in his power to pull us back from the brink.
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Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from Shutterstock
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2022
Washington is very brave, like always.
“During two days of unsuccessful attacks on the Nikolaevo-Krivoy Rog and other directions, Ukrainian troops lost … more than 1.7 thousand Ukrainian servicemen.”
Human life means nothing to the Washington warmongers or their stooges in Kiev. The same people warming their hands over the fires of Ukraine have presided over a COVID-19 policy that has killed over 1 million Americans and plunged US life expectancy by nearly three years. The lives of Ukraine’s youth, many of them conscripted, are being squandered, mere cannon fodder, or to use the phrase favored by Leo Tolstoy, “cannon meat.”
Andre Damon@Andre__Damon
Sept 9, 2022
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Ukraine to pledge to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, cheering on an offensive that US forces quietly warn will lead to “massive casualties.”
In July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov openly declared that the country should be viewed as a “testing ground” for US defense contractors. “We are inviting arms manufacturers to test new products here,” he said.
“More than six months” into the war, Blinken boasted, “your counteroffensive is now underway and proving effective.”
Blinken was referring to a US-instigated offensive to retake portions of Russian-occupied territory, which has already resulted in a horrendous bloodbath. Ukrainian forces have claimed that hundreds of Russians are being killed each day, while Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “During two days of unsuccessful attacks on the Nikolaevo-Krivoy Rog and other directions, Ukrainian troops lost … more than 1.7 thousand Ukrainian servicemen.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one of the Americans on the ground coordinating the Ukraine war effort as part of the “Mozart group” paramilitary force told Newsweek that Ukraine’s planned offensive will be “very bloody.”
“There’s a lot of casualties, it doesn’t matter how well trained you are,” he said. “No matter how well prepared your people and your troops are, nobody’s ever prepared for the massive number of casualties.”
In fact, the Pentagon and their underlings in Kiev are indifferent to the loss of Ukrainian lives. The much-publicized counter-offensive involves assaults on well-fortified Russian defensive positions. The Ukrainian soldiers are exposed to massive bombardment from Russian artillery and aircraft.
Even before this offensive, the war in Ukraine has been a disaster for the populations of both Ukraine and Russia. Many thousands of soldiers have been killed on both sides. Some 6.6 million people have been displaced, while over 5,500 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, according to the United Nations.
Human life means nothing to the Washington warmongers or their stooges in Kiev. The same people warming their hands over the fires of Ukraine have presided over a COVID-19 policy that has killed over 1 million Americans and plunged US life expectancy by nearly three years. The lives of Ukraine’s youth, many of them conscripted, are being squandered, mere cannon fodder, or to use the phrase favored by Leo Tolstoy, “cannon meat.”
The recklessness of the US in escalating the war was summed up earlier this month by The Hill in an article titled “Why the US is becoming more brazen with its Ukraine support.” It concluded: “The Biden administration is arming Ukraine with weapons that can do serious damage to Russian forces, and, unlike early in the war, US officials don’t appear worried about Moscow’s reaction.”
In July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov openly declared that the country should be viewed as a “testing ground” for US defense contractors. “We are inviting arms manufacturers to test new products here,” he said.
Indeed, US defense contractors are not only “testing” their products in Ukraine, but they are also raking in money hand over fist. Despite the eight percent decline in the US stock market over the past year, shares of Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor, are up by 20 percent over the same period, as are the share prices of General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
US arms manufacturers are not only cashing in directly on the thousands of missiles, drones and other weapons being sent to Ukraine, but also on the massive rearmament of the NATO allies, who have all vowed to expand their military spending to record levels.
And they are not the only American companies enjoying record profits. As Russia has dramatically curtailed its gas deliveries to Europe as a result of the war, US natural gas exports to Europe have tripled, while the prices paid by European consumers have surged ten-fold over the past year.
US energy companies posted their largest profits ever last month, with ExxonMobil posting a record $17.85 billion in quarterly profits and Chevron a record $11.62 billion.
Throughout the US economy, corporate profits have surged to 15.5 percent, the highest figure reported since 1950 and double what they were 10 years ago, amid rampant corporate price-gouging and a collapse in workers’ living standards.
American companies are benefiting from a war that was deliberately provoked by Washington and a pro-NATO Ukrainian government that emerged from a US-orchestrated 2014 coup in Kiev. For all the winged phrases of “democracy” and “national sovereignty,” the real meaning of Ukraine to US imperialist strategists was spelled out bluntly by US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who called the country a “battleground for great-power competition.”
Speaking at Ramstein Air Force base in Germany, US officials pledged to “put the Russians back on their heels.” US Defense Secretary Austin boasted of the range of weapons systems provided by the US to Ukraine.
Over the past three months, Austin said, the US has sent over 126 M77 howitzers, adding, “We’ve increased the number of howitzer systems for Ukraine’s defenders by more than 18-fold.” He added that 25 long-range missile launchers have been sent to Ukraine, including the HIMARS. Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, bragged that “the Ukrainians have struck over 400 targets with the HIMARS.”
Critically, as this meeting was taking place, Ukrainian officials admitted that the series of attacks on Crimea last month were “successful missile strikes,” leaving open the possibility that the US-supplied HIMARS were used.
Austin said the mission of the US is “changing,” making it clear that the aim of the US is to draw the war out for as long as possible. He pledged to “upgrade our defense industrial bases” for the “long haul”—a phrase he repeated five times.
In this he echoed the words of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who wrote earlier this week that NATO was “making the most fundamental shift in NATO’s deterrence and defense since the Cold War,” but that this would come at the cost of “soaring energy prices and costs of living,” and the “threat of energy cuts, disruptions and perhaps even civil unrest.”
The war unleashed by the US and NATO powers is at one and the same time a war against the working class: of Ukraine and Russia, of Europe and of the United States. In the name of the “war against Putin,” the imperialist powers are waging a war against the world’s workers, declaring that they must accept energy rationing, plunging pay, and even starvation.
But the working class will have its own say in the matter. The crisis created by the collapse in living standards has led to a global surge of the class struggle, from the UK to France, the United States, Sri Lanka, and Africa. As they enter into struggle, workers all over the world must raise the demand for an end to the war. To the ruling class’s policy of world war, workers must counterpose the strategy of class war and the struggle for the socialist transformation of society.
Howitzers, Humvees and HIMARS ammunition are among the $675 million worth of aid to Kiev
https://www.rt.com/russia/562456-ramstein-austin-pentagon-ukraine-arms/
Sept 8, 2022
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (L) and Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov (R) at the meeting in Ramstein, September 08, 2022 © Getty Images / Thomas Niedermueller
Artillery ammunition, armored vehicles, and remote-launched mines make up the bulk of the new package of US military aid to Ukraine, which Washington values at $675 million, according to a list published by the US Department of Defense on Thursday.
This is the 20th “drawdown” of equipment for Ukraine from US military stocks since August 2021 – months before the conflict escalated.
According to the Pentagon, Kiev will receive ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and High-speed Anti-radiation missiles (HARM) – without specifying the quantities of either – as well as 36,000 105mm artillery rounds and four howitzers of the same caliber.
In addition to 100 armored Humvee cars, Ukraine will get 1.5 million bullets, 5,000 anti-tank rockets, 50 armored ambulances, and 1,000 rounds of the 155mm Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems, as well as some night vision devices, the Pentagon said.
Speaking at the meeting of the “Ukraine Defense Contact Group” in Ramstein, Germany, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin boasted that Kiev has so far received 126 of the M777 howitzers since April, and a total of 26 multiple-launch rocket systems – including the US-made HIMARS – capable of firing long-range missiles.
Austin claimed the weapons have “demonstrably” helped Ukraine in the conflict, but said it was time for NATO to “sustain Ukraine’s brave defenders for the long haul” by “moving urgently to innovate and to push all of our defense industrial bases” so they could supply Kiev on “the hard road ahead.”
Of other countries that have chipped in, Austin singled out the UK for sending 2.3 billion pounds in military aid, and Poland for “serving as the linchpin of our efforts to support the Ukrainians,” including “generous donations” of tanks and artillery.
By the Pentagon’s own admission, the US has committed “more than $17.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine” since 2014, and another $14.5 billion since February. Just this week, the US State Department pledged another $2 billion for long-term investments in military industry, half to Ukraine and half to 18 of its neighbors.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
The same day:
The Joe Biden administration pledged Ukraine $39.87 billion in military aid between February and August 2022, for an average of $228 million per day, fueling a brutal proxy war causing tens of thousands of deaths.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-sends-ukraine-228-million-per-day-military-aid-wage-proxy-war-russia/5792548
By Ben Norton
Global Research, September 06, 2022
Multipolarista 31 August 2022
Theme: Militarization and WMD
In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT
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The Joe Biden administration pledged Ukraine $39.87 billion in military aid in the six months between February and August 2022, for an average of $228 million per day, fueling what even former US government officials admit is a “brutal proxy war” that is causing tens of thousands of deaths.
Where Military Aid to Ukraine Comes From
Researcher Stephen Semler documented the 21 distinct military aid packages that the Joe Biden administration approved for Ukraine in the year between August 2021 and August 2022, at a total of $40.13 billion.
Two of those 21 pledges were approved before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Excluding these two presidential drawdowns from August and December 2021, which are worth $260 million combined, the Biden administration passed $39.87 billion for military aid in Ukraine between February 25, 2022 (the day after the Russian invasion) and August 19, 2022.
This $39.87 billion in pledged military aid divided by the 175 days between February 25, 2022 and August 19, 2022 comes out to an average of approximately $228 million per day.
This spending does not include the billions more that the US government has pledged in economic aid to Ukraine. It likewise excludes the tens of billions of dollars of military aid that European countries have approved for Ukraine.
Video
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Featured image: Ukrainian military exercise “Cossack Will” in 2018 (Source: Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense)
The original source of this article is Multipolarista
Copyright © Ben Norton, Multipolarista, 2022
Ukraine is finished as a nation – neither side will rest in this war. The only question is whether it will be an Afghan or Syrian style finale…
What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine.
WEDNESDAY, AUG 31, 2022
One year after the astounding US humiliation in Kabul – and on the verge of another serious comeuppance in Donbass – there is reason to believe Moscow is wary of Washington seeking vengeance: in the form of the ‘Afghanization’ of Ukraine.
With no end in sight to western weapons and finance flowing into kyiv, it must be recognized that the Ukrainian battle is likely to disintegrate into yet another endless war. Like the Afghan jihad in the 1980s which employed US-armed and funded guerrillas to drag Russia into its depths, Ukraine’s backers will employ those war-tested methods to run a protracted battle that can spill into bordering Russian lands.
Yet this US attempt at crypto-Afghanization will at best accelerate the completion of what Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu describes as the “tasks” of its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. For Moscow right now, that road leads all the way to Odessa .
It didn’t have to be this way. Until the recent assassination of Darya Dugina at Moscow’s gates, the battlefield in Ukraine was in fact under a ‘Syrianization’ process.
Like the foreign proxy war in Syria this past decade, frontlines around significant Ukrainian cities had roughly stabilized.
Losing on the larger battlefields, kyiv had increasingly moved to employ terrorist tactics.
Neither side could completely master the immense war theater at hand. So the Russian military opted to keep minimal forces in battle – contrary to the strategy it employed in 1980s Afghanistan.
Let’s remind ourselves of a few Syrian facts: Palmyra was liberated in March 2016, then lost and retaken in 2017. Aleppo was liberated only in December 2016. Deir Ezzor in September 2017. A slice of northern Hama in December and January 2018. The outskirts of Damascus in the Spring of 2018. Idlib – and significantly, over 25 percent of Syrian territory – are still not liberated. That tells a lot about rhythm in a war theater.
The Russian military never made a conscious decision to interrupt the multi-channel flow of western weapons to kyiv. Methodically destroying those weapons once they’re in Ukrainian territory – with plenty of success – is another matter. The same applies to smashing mercenary networks.
Moscow is well aware that any negotiation with those pulling the strings in Washington – and dictating all terms to puppets in Brussels and kyiv – is futile. The fight in Donbass and beyond is a do or die affair.
So the battle will go on, destroying what’s left of Ukraine, just as it destroyed much of Syria. The difference is that economically, much more than in Syria, what’s left of Ukraine will plunge into a black void. Only territory under Russian control will be rebuilt, and that includes, significantly, the bulk of Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure.
What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine.
Going forward, by next year the Russians will be applying themselves to cutting off kyiv from NATO weapons supplies. As that unfolds, the Anglo-Americans will eventually move whatever puppet regime remains to Lviv. And kyiv terrorism – conducted by Bandera worshipers – will continue to be the new normal in the capital.
The Kazakh double game
By now it’s abundantly clear this is not a mere war of territorial conquest. It’s certainly part of a War of Economic Corridors – as the US spares no effort to sabotage and smash the multiple connectivity channels of Eurasia’s integration projects, be they Chinese-led (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) or Russian-led (Eurasian Economic Union , EAEU).
Just like the proxy war in Syria remade large swathes of West Asia (witness, for instance, Erdogan about to meet Assad), the fight in Ukraine, in a microcosm, is a war for the reconfiguration of the current world order, where Europe is a mother self-inflicted victim in a minor subplot.
The Big Picture is the emergence of multipolarity.
The proxy war in Syria lasted a decade, and it’s not over yet. The same may happen to the proxy war in Ukraine. As it stands, Russia has taken an area that is roughly equivalent to Hungary and Slovakia combined. That’s still far from “task” fulfillment – and it’s bound to go on until Russia has taken all the land right up to the Dnieper as well as Odessa, connecting it to the breakaway Republic of Transnistria.
It’s enlightening to see how important Eurasian actors are reacting to such geopolitical turbulence. And that brings us to the cases of Kazakhstan and Turkey.
The Telegram channel Rybar (with over 640k followers) and hacker group Beregini revealed in an investigation that Kazakhstan was selling weapons to Ukraine, which translates as de facto treason against their own Russian allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Consider too that Kazakhstan is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the EAEU, the two hubs of the Eurasian-led multipolar order.
As a consequence of the scandal, Kazakhstan was forced to officially announce the suspension of all weapons exports until the end of 2023.
It began with hackers unveiling how Technoexport – a Kazakh company – was selling armed personnel carriers, anti-tank systems and munitions to kyiv via Jordanian intermediaries, under the orders of the United Kingdom. The deal itself was supervised by the British military attaché in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital.
Nur-Sultan predictably tried to dismiss the allegations, arguing that Technoexport had not asked for export licenses. That was essentially false: the Rybar team discovered that Technoexport instead used Blue Water Supplies, a Jordanian firm, for those. And the story gets even justice. All the contract documents ended up being found in the computers of Ukrainian intel.
Moreover, the hackers found out about another deal involving Kazspetsexport, via a Bulgarian buyer, for the sale of Kazakh Su-27s, airplane turbines and Mi-24 helicopters. These would have been delivered to the US, but their final destination was Ukraine.
The icing on this Central Asian cake is that Kazakhstan also sells significant amounts of Russian – not Kazakh – oil to Kiev.
So it seems that Nur-Sultan, perhaps unofficially, somehow contributes to the ‘Afghanization’ in the war in Ukraine. No diplomatic leaks confirm it, of course, but bets can be made Putin had a few things to say about that to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in their recent – cordial – meeting.
The Sultan’s balancing act
Turkey is a way more complex case. Ankara is not a member of the SCO, the CSTO or the EAEU. It is still hedging its bets, calculating on which terms it will join the high-speed rail of Eurasian integration. And yet, via several schemes, Ankara allows Moscow to evade the avalanche of western sanctions and embargoes.
Turkish businesses – literally all of them with close connections to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) – are making a killing, and relishing their new role as crossroads warehouse between Russia and the west. It’s an open boast in Istanbul that what Russia cannot buy from Germany or France they buy “from us.” And in fact several EU companies are in on it.
Ankara’s balancing act is as sweet as a good baklava . It gathers economic support from a very important partner right in the middle of the endless, very serious Turkish economic debacle. They agree on nearly everything: Russian gas, S-400 missile systems, the building of the Russian nuclear power plant, tourism – Istanbul is crammed with Russians – Turkish fruits and vegetables.
Ankara-Moscow employ sound textbook geopolitics. They play it openly, in full transparency. That does not mean they are allies. It’s just pragmatic business between states. For instance, an economic response may alleviate a geopolitical problem, and vice versa.
Obviously the collective west has completely forgotten how that normal state-to-state behavior works. It’s pathetic. Turkey gets “denounced” by the west as traitorous – as much as China.
Of course, Erdogan also needs to play to the galleries, so every once in a while he says that Crimea should be taken back by Kyiv. After all, his companies also do business with Ukraine – Bayraktar drones and otherwise.
And then there’s proselytizing: Crimea remains theoretically ripe for Turkish influence, where Ankara may exploit the notions of pan-Islamism and mostly pan-Turkism, capitalizing on the historical relations between the peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.
Is Moscow worried? Not really. As for those Bayraktar TB2s sold to kyiv, they will continue to be relentlessly reduced to ashes. Nothing personal. Just business.
SOURCE: PEPE ESCOBAR – THE SAKER
Published: August 29, 2022
Dmitry Medvedev, relishing his unplugged self, has laid down the law on the Special Military Operation (SMO). Bluntly, he affirmed there is a “one and a half” scenario: either to go all the way, or a military coup d’Etat in Ukraine followed by admitting the inevitable. No tertium applies.
In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy.
Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour.
As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet.
Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.
It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty.
You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level.
The runaway train, of course, may veer off track and plunge into an Alpine abyss. In this case, something might be saved from the wreckage – and “reconstruction” might be on the cards. But reconstruct what?
Europe could always reconstruct a new Reich (collapsed with a bang in 1945); a soft Reich (erected at the end of WWII); or break with its past failures, sing “I’m Free” – and connect with Eurasia. Don’t bet on it.
GET BACK THOSE TAURIAN LANDS
The SMO may be about to radically change – something that will drive the already clueless denizens of US Think Tankland and their Euro vassals even more berserk.
President Putin and Defense Minister Shoigu have been giving serious hints the only way for the pain dial is up – considering the mounting evidence of terrorism inside Russian territory; the vile assassination of Darya Dugina; non-stop shelling of civilians in border regions; attacks on Crimea; the use of chemical weapons; and the shelling of Zaporizhzhya power plant raising the risk of a nuclear catastrophe.
This past Tuesday, one day before the SMO completing six months, Crimea’s permanent representative to the Kremlin, Georgy Muradov, all but spelled it out.
He stressed the necessity to “reintegrate all the Taurian lands” – Crimea, the Northern Black Sea and the Azov Sea – into a single entity as soon as “in the next few months”. He defined this process as “objective and demanded by the population of these regions.”
Muradov added, “given not only the strikes on Crimea but also the continuous shelling of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the dam of the Kakhovka reservoir, peaceful facilities on the territory of Russia, the DNR and LNR, there are all preconditions to qualify the actions of the Banderite regime as terrorist.”
The conclusion is inevitable: “the political issue of changing the format of the special military operation” enters the agenda. After all, Washington and Brussels “have already prepared new anti-Crimean provocations of the NATO-Bandera alliance”.
So when we examine what the “restoration of the Taurian lands” implies, we see not only the contours of Novorossiya but most of all that there won’t be any security for Crimea – and thus Russia – in the Black Sea without Odessa becoming Russian again. And that, on top of it, will solve the Transnistria dilemma.
Add to it Kharkov – the capital and top industrial center of Greater Donbass. And of course Dnipropetrovsk. They are all SMO objectives, the whole combo to be later protected by buffer zones in Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts.
Only then the “tasks” – as Shoigu calls them – of the SMO would be declared fulfilled. The timeline could be eight to ten months – after a lull under General Winter.
As the turbo-charged SMO rolls on, it’s a given the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder will continue to prop up and weaponize the Kiev racket till Kingdom Come – and that will apply especially after the Return of Odessa. What’s unclear is who and what gang will be left in Kiev posing as the ruling party and doing specials for Vogue while duly fulfilling the mass of imperial diktats.
It’s also a given the CIA/MI6 combo will be refining non-stop the contours of a massive guerrilla war against Russia in multiple fronts – crammed with terror attacks and all sorts of provocations.
Yet in the Bigger Picture it’s the inevitable Russian military victory in Donbass and then “all the Taurian lands” that will hit the collective West like a lethal asteroid. The geopolitical humiliation will be unbearable; not to mention the geoeconomic humiliation for vassalized Europe.
As Eurasian integration will become an even stronger vector, Russian diplomacy will be solidifying the new normal. Never forget that Moscow had no trouble normalizing relations, for instance, with China, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Israel. All these actors, in different ways, directly contributed to the fall of the USSR. Now – with one exception – they are all focused on The Dawn of the Eurasian Century.
Russia is “certainly” fighting NATO in Ukraine, not Ukraine itself, President Putin’s deputy chief-of-staff has claimed
https://www.rt.com/russia/560595-kirienko-ukraine-proxy-war/
Aug 10, 2022
First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Office Sergey Kirienko. © Sputnik / Maxim Blinov
Ukraine’s leadership has sold out its own people to fight on behalf of NATO against Russia, Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said. He added that Western nations are happy to see Ukrainians die as long as it serves their interests.
“We understand very well that we are not fighting against Ukraine in the Ukrainian territory, and certainly not against the Ukrainian people. The entire NATO bloc is at war with Russia in Ukraine with Ukrainians’ hands,” Kirienko said in a speech on Wednesday.
He blamed the government in Kiev for the violence, accusing it of allowing the country and its people to be sacrificed in a “fundamental confrontation of the Western community against Russia.”
NATO will gladly fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’ as they say themselves without hesitance. Why not? They don’t feel sorry about it.
Kirienko was addressing a forum for young Russian political scientists, which launched this week in the Moscow Region. Speaking via video link, he told attendees that it will be up to them to find new ideas and narratives to help the country take a prominent place in the future world, the shape of which is being determined by the ongoing conflict.
The Russia-West stand-off goes far beyond the kinetic conflict in Ukraine, the official said. Unprecedented economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies on Moscow and “info-psychological attacks” directed at it are essential parts of the conflict too, he noted.
Sweden to prepare Ukrainians for military service
Moscow’s opponents had miscalculated when they decided on their response to Russian military action in Ukraine, Kirienko said, citing classified Western documents.
“They seriously debated in early March whether they needed five million people protesting in the streets in Russia or should better go for ten million and when to expect that: by the end of March or in mid-April at the latest,” he said. The planners believed that Russia “would be too busy to defend its geostrategic interests” when facing the anticipated protests, he added.
Despite this, Kirienko advised against relaxing, saying that the pressure on Russia will remain high and may become more efficient. Moscow’s opponents “are pretty smart and competent people, who can learn from their mistakes,” he said.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
https://www.rt.com/news/557848-us-cia-agents-kiev/
June 26, 2022
CIA agents have been stationed in Kiev to share US intel with Ukrainian troops, the report claims
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, April 2016. © Saul Loeb / AFP
A secret network of commandos and spies from the US, and some of its allies, is working to provide weapons, intelligence and training to Ukraine, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday, citing current and former American and European officials.
While much of the activity takes place at bases in Britain, Germany, and France, some CIA agents have been stationed in the East European country, mostly in the capital Kiev, the paper said.
The agents are tasked with sharing satellite images and other intelligence with Ukrainian troops, according to the story.
The US announced the evacuation of military instructors from Ukraine in February. Shortly afterwards, Russia launched its military campaign and the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group set up a planning cell in Germany to coordinate military aid to Kiev, the paper explained. The group has reportedly grown to include participants from 20 nations.
The NYT added that “a few dozen commandos” from other NATO member states, including Canada, Britain, France, and Lithuania, have also been working in Ukraine.
NATO members have been supplying Ukraine with heavy weapons, including missile launchers, combat drones, and armored vehicles, and training Ukrainian troops to use them. In recent months, the Pentagon has delivered M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and M777 howitzers.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week that Ukraine was facing “a pivotal moment on the battlefield” and urged Washington’s allies to continue aiding Kiev.
The report about the activities of Western commandos and CIA agents in and around Ukraine comes as a three-day Group of Seven (G7) summit kicks off in Germany on Sunday. The group, which comprises of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, which have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia.
Moscow has said in the past that it will treat foreign weapons, on Ukrainian soil, as legitimate targets.
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