Tag Archives: Crimea

Troubling Questions Over U.S. Drone Crash Near Crimea… An Inevitable Collision Made in Washington, by The Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on March 18, 2023 | 1 comment

The U.S. claims the imperial right to be wherever it wants to be. From The Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

A $32 million drone buried unceremoniously at sea says a lot about a failing empire.

A U.S. spy drone operating 8,000 kilometers from Washington on Russia’s borders, helping a Nazi regime at war against Russia, crashes into the Black Sea – and yet, insanely, Moscow is arraigned for taking defensive action?

One has to be amazed by the total dissonance among American politicians and media over the incident this week when an unmanned U.S. military aircraft crashed into the Black Sea near Russian territory. The righteous indignation speaks of ineffable double-think and hypocrisy.

Russia was condemned for “reckless” and “unlawful” conduct after two of its fighter jets intercepted an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Reaper is deployed both as a surveillance aircraft and as an attack weapon capable of firing missiles. This drone was detected approaching airspace that Moscow has designated off-limits in connection with its special military operation in Ukraine.

The Pentagon claimed that one of the Russian Su-27 jets collided with the drone causing damage to one of its propellers. The U.S. Air Force says its operators brought down the Reaper which crashed in international waters. Why was a $32 million UAV so readily ditched?

For its part, Russia claims that its fighter jets buzzed the American drone causing it to make sharp maneuvers whereupon the UAV lost aeronautical control and crashed into the sea. Moscow has put the blame on the United States for creating a provocation and called on the U.S. to halt hostile flights near its borders. An effort to recover the drone debris is underway by Russia. Sensitive flight data may show what kind of mission the UAV was really undertaking. Was it gathering offensive targeting coordinates, as many such American UAVs have been doing over the past year to enable the Kiev regime?

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NBC Reporter Goes to Crimea, Shocks Viewers by Telling The Truth, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 6, 2023 | 1 comment

Imagine a reporter reporting the news the old-fashioned way: from where it actually happens. From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge via lewrockwell.com

Mainstream media correspondents for major US networks rarely, if ever, report from inside Crimea and certainly are nowhere near Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. However, this week NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons went to Sevastopol, surrounded by a significant Russian military presence given it is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, and in a live segment admitted that it’s not at all realistic Zelensky and Ukrainian forces can ever hope to take Crimea.

This is especially as the “the people there… view themselves as Russian.” Simmons noted that “This is the closest that any US news crew has got to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in many many years.” He explained that “Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend that port – to not have it take it away from him – he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that.”

“It is a very, very dangerous standoff.. it’s hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that. There’s military absolutely everywhere, it is a military town,” he continued, before saying…

“When for example Victoria Nuland talks about that at the very least we [the US] want Crimea to be demilitarized, I find myself standing there and wondering, how on earth does that happen?”

Ukrainian officials and pro-Kyiv media pundits are said to be outraged at the segment, given it repeatedly and bluntly referenced that Crimeans see themselves as Russians. Even a separate write-up filed days earlier from inside Crimea and posted to NBC’s website included the following:

This is not Russia, according to Kyiv, its Western allies and the United Nations. It was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014, with the U.N. calling on Russia to return to its “internationally recognized borders.” And following Moscow’s broader invasion launched a year ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed Ukraine will take Crimea back.

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US May Help Ukraine Launch An Offensive On Crimea, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 19, 2023 | 1 comment

Good luck trying to take Crimea away from Russia. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

In a new article titled “U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea,” the New York Times reports that the Biden administration now believes Kyiv may need to launch an offensive on the territory that Moscow has considered a part of the Russian Federation since 2014, “even if such a move increases the risk of escalation.”

Citing unnamed US officials, The New York Times says “the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily,” but that “Russia needs to believe that Crimea is at risk, in part to strengthen Ukraine’s position in any future negotiations.”

It’s hard to imagine a full-scale assault on geostrategically crucial territory long considered a part of the Russian homeland not causing a major escalation. And as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes, smaller attacks on Crimea have indeed seen significant escalations from Moscow, contrary to claims laid out in the NYT article:The New York Times report quoted Dara Massicot, a researcher from the RAND Corporation, who claimed that “Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin.” But Massicot’s claim is false as Russia began launching missile strikes on vital Ukrainian infrastructure in response to the October truck bombing of the Crimean Bridge.

The New York Times report quoted Dara Massicot, a researcher from the RAND Corporation, who claimed that “Crimea has already been hit many times without a massive escalation from the Kremlin.” But Massicot’s claim is false as Russia began launching missile strikes on vital Ukrainian infrastructure in response to the October truck bombing of the Crimean Bridge.

Before the bridge bombing, Russia didn’t launch large-scale attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine, but now such bombardments have become routine, and millions of Ukrainians are struggling to power and heat their homes.

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UKRAINE CRISIS: German Navy Chief Resigns; Britain Spreads Fears of Russian ‘Coup’ & Wider War, by Joe Lauria

Posted on January 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

Tell the truth and you’re gone; tell lies and you can probably start a war. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

The German admiral’s frank remarks contradict the war hysteria being drummed up by the U.S. and Britain, Joe Lauria reports.

Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, the head of the German navy, has resigned after saying talk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “nonsense” and that Russia was merely seeking “respect” for its security concerns in Europe.

“It is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and probably also deserves,” Schönbach told a meeting of a think tank in New Delhi on Friday.

“My minister asked me what does Russia really want?” the vice-admiral said.

“Is Russia really interested in having a small, tiny strip of Ukrainian soil to integrate into their country? No. This is nonsense. I think Putin is putting pressure on it because he knows he can do it. And he splits the European Union. But what he really wants is respect. He wants on a high-level, respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost. So if I were asked, it is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and probably also deserves. Russia is an old country. Russia is an important country.”

Schönbach also acknowledged that “the Crimean peninsula is gone. It will never come back. This is a fact.” That contradicted NATO’s official position.

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Sleepy Joe Cradles the Dead Hand of the Soviet Presidium, by David Stockman

Posted on December 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Nothing would be more foolish than to extend NATO membership and its security guarantee to Ukraine. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:

What’s wrong with these people?

We are referring to the dipshit NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, who recently informed the Kremlin that what happens on Russia’s border is none of Russia’s damn business:

“It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. … Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.”

Did this warmongering jackass and relic of a cold war that ended 30 years ago ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine? Is he possibly not educated enough to know that in October 1962 the world came to the brink of nuclear annihilation over the principle that Cuban territory 90 miles from the US border was exactly in Washington’s sphere of influence and that the encroachment of Khrushchev’s missiles on Cuba was distinctively unwelcome?

And yet here we go again. An irredeemably corrupt and belligerent NATO-financed government in Kiev has essentially declared hot war on its own Russian-speaking populations in the Donbas and Crimea, thereby bringing on a new crusade to enroll the Ukraine into NATO and its collective security guarantees under article 5.

No greater folly is imaginable. The safety and security of the American people depends not a whit on what happens in Ukraine and whether it remains a financially crippled ward of the West or reverts to its historic role as a vassal of Moscow. Peace and liberty in America have absolutely nothing to do with the outcome.

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Russia Says US Engineered June’s Black Sea Provocation, “We’ll Sink” Any Threat Next Time, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Russians are probably not bluffing. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In the days after the June 23 incident between the UK Royal Navy’s HMS Defender and a Russian patrol vessel and military aircraft near Crimea which resulted in warning shots fired from the Russian side, Putin asserted that a US reconnaissance plane had been nearby monitoring the dangerous close-call incident as it unfolded below. Putin had cast the whole showdown as a “provocation” in which the US aircraft was present monitor Russia’s response to the UK vessel. Moscow’s position is that the UK vessel had ventured a full three kilometers into Russian territorial waters, which was met with a Su-24M dropping bombs in the Defender’s path along with the Russian patrol ship firing warning shots.

The latest charge on Sunday, however, has gone further, with Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov accusing Washington and the UK of essentially engineering the dangerously close military encounter in order to probe and test Russia’s defense of its borders.

“I think our intelligence certainly knows who made a decision there [in the situation with the British destroyer]. But certainly I think such operations are basically planned by senior partners from overseas,” Peskov was cited in TASS as saying.

UK military drills involving HMS Defender in the Mediterranean, via The Drive.

Given Putin’s prior words pointing the finger directly at Washington during his annual televised Q&A last month, this latest Kremlin statement is also no doubt a clear reference to the US (in terms of the provocative reference to “who made the decision here”). Presidential spokesman Peskov elaborated further in his Sunday statements that “in this case the destroyer was just a tool of provocation.”

These latest statements came with a warning, following the earlier summoning of the British ambassador and military attaché in Moscow quickly after the event. Peskov said Russia will continue to “respond harshly” to any future provocations in a similar way. This after UK officials expressed “surprise” at how rapidly the sea encounter devolved in a ‘live fire’ incident. 

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Putin Talks to the Nation, by Israel Shamir

Posted on July 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin talked to Russia and he had a few things to say about Crimea and Ukraine. From Israel Shamir at unz.com:

The Russian Direct Line is a unique exercise in direct democracy: Russian citizens call up their president and he answers their queries and solves their problems, like a Nordic konung a thousand years ago. Russia came into being as a chain of Nordic princedoms that practiced this sort of direct access to their ruler; early Russian princes and Tsars posed themselves as an instance of last appeal and immediate access. Twenty years ago, Vladimir Putin resurrected this ancient practice, and once a year every Russian can appeal to him on any subject matter at all. A man of power and authority, he can override any regulation, cut through the bureaucratic red tape, and solve any conundrum by his almost-royal grace. In the heavily bureaucratised country, such an omnipotent yet benevolent ruler provides excellent solutions to problems that should never have arisen in the first place.

The majority of questions and answers deal with everyday Russian life; with the supply of gas, with water drainage, with prices for vegetables, or communal charges. But Putin also answered questions that dealt with real world politics, and provided a few scoops for us. (Here is the full transcript)

The HMS Defender raid into Crimean waters is still fresh in memory, so Putin was asked whether this confrontation could have led to the Third World War. “No”, said Putin. “Even if we had sunk that ship, it wouldn’t put the world on the brink of a third world war because they know they could not win the war. We would also suffer, but we were in the right, and on our own ground.” This means that Russians are perfectly able to sink or capture the next NATO ship if she were to enter Russian waters.

The question of sovereign recognition does not come into the equation at all. Possession and recognition are different. The US refused to recognise (from 1940 to 1991) that the Baltic States were part of the USSR, but prudently the US Navy never tried to visit Riga port, even equipped as it was with a permit from the Latvian government-in-exile. Argentina would not recognise the British claim of sovereignty over Malvinas (Falklands) and boldly sailed within 200 miles of it. Their cruiser General Belgrano was sunk with all hands by the British RN submarine Conqueror. The law of the sea advises seafarers to pay heed to reality, not to claims however legally impressive.

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HMS Defender Versus The Russian Military: The Danger of Believing Your Own Propaganda, by Ron Paul

Posted on June 28, 2021 | 1 comment

As the man said in Scarface, “don’t get high on your own supply.” The American and British government believe their own propaganda to the point of delusion. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Less than two weeks after NATO members reaffirmed allegiance to Article 5 – that an attack on one member was an attack on all members – the UK nearly put that pledge to the test. In a shockingly provocative move, the UK’s HMS Defender purposely sailed into Crimean territorial waters on its way to Georgia.

Press reports suggest that there was a dispute between the UK defense and foreign ministries over whether to violate Russia’s claimed territorial waters with a heavily armed warship. According to reports, Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself jumped in to over-rule the more cautious Foreign Office in favor of confrontation.

As Johnson later claimed, because the UK (and the US) does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the UK was actually sailing through Ukrainian waters. It was an in-your-face move toward Russia just weeks after the US and NATO were forced to back down from a major clash with Russia in eastern Ukraine

This time, as was the case in eastern Ukraine, the Russians took a different view of the situation. Russian coast guard vessels ordered the HMS Defender to exit Russian territorial waters – an order they punctuated with rare live fire of cannon and dropping of bombs.

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As Russian Tanks Move Toward Ukraine, The Globe Braces For World War 3, by Michael Snyder

Posted on April 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Is it for show or could it become real? From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

At this hour, more Russian military forces are massed near Ukraine’s borders than we have ever seen before.  Western military leaders say that they are concerned that the troop movements that we have witnessed in recent days may be leading up to an invasion, and if an invasion does happen it will greatly test the resolve of the Biden administration, EU leaders and NATO brass.  In particular, the hawks in the Biden administration would almost certainly not be willing to just sit back and let the Russians conquer all of Ukraine.  There would likely be a major response by the United States, and that could set off a chain reaction that could ultimately spark World War 3.

So what made the Russians suddenly move a massive invasion force toward Ukraine?

Well, it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th.  The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it.  I took several of the paragraphs at the beginning of the document and I ran them through Google translate…

In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I decree:

1. To put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 “On the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” (attached).

2. To approve the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).

3. Control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, enacted by this Decree, shall be vested in the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

4. This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication.

President of Ukraine V.ZELENSKY

March 24, 2021

Basically, this decree makes it the official policy of the government of Ukraine to retake Crimea from Russia.

Of course the Russians will never hand over Crimea willingly because they consider it to be Russian territory, and so Ukraine would have to take it by force.

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US Makes Large Military Hardware Delivery To Ukraine’s Army After Biden Pledged “Crimea is Ukraine”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Are Biden and his cohorts so stupid that they’re going to start a war over Crimea? From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Russian state sources are alleging that Washington under the Biden administration is ramping up military aid to Ukraine after local media observed a US cargo ship delivering 350 tonnes of military equipment – including tactical vehicles – to Ukraine’s Odessa port.

Local media reported the delivery which began late Wednesday and which is said to still be in process Friday. Ukraine’s Dumskaya news agency said the American vessel carried at least 35 US military humvees for Ukrainian national forces.

File image, via Defence Blog

“Dry-cargo ship Ocean Glory under the American flag entered the port of Odessa last night,” the report indicated.

“The bulk carrier Ocean Glory specializes in military transportation. Built in 2015, length 171 meters, width 25 meters, deadweight about 20 thousand tons,” it added according to a translation.

The delivery follows last year’s US DoD announcement of an additional $125 million military assistance package for Ukraine (unveiled in March) which involves equipment, training, and military advisory support, with an additional $150 million waiting for Congressional and Pentagon approval.

Dumskaya news agency said the “Ocean Glory” vessel made the military hardware delivery.

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