Tag Archives: Ukraine-Russia War

Fact Checking Zelensky on Non-Alignment, by Ted Snider

Posted on February 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Any fact checking of Zelensky will yield a bounteous harvest of lies. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

In his annual message to the parliament of Ukraine at the end of 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine has changed the world by uniting the West and making non-alignment unpalatable.

He said that Ukraine has “helped the West find itself again,” that it has “united the European Union.” He said that Ukraine has “helped Europe and most of the world feel that being neutral now is, pardon me, immoral.”

There is some truth to Zelensky’s first claim. The war in Ukraine has given renewed unity, agreement and purpose to NATO. Although, even here, there are outliers.

Turkey has not been united with NATO. It has sought to mediate a negotiated settlement to the war, it has held out on approval of Swedish and Finnish accession to NATO, it has spurned the sanctions regime against Russia and drastically increased trade. Hungary has not been united with NATO. On January 15, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic opposed sanctions on Russia and accused “Washington and NATO” of “waging a proxy war against Russia with the help of Ukraine.” Italy has been hesitant to send further aid in part because of domestic political tension.

Even France and Germany have not been fully united with the West. Both German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron have continued to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And both Macron and Scholz have defied the US in suggesting that negotiations with Russia include addressing Russia’s security concerns.

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A tale of two worlds, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on February 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

One world is based on debt and fiat currencies, the other world is moving towards production and gold. Which shall prevail? From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

In the war between the western alliance and the Asian axis, the media focus is on the Ukrainian battlefield. The real war is in currencies, with Russia capable of destroying the dollar.

So far, Putin’s actions have been relatively passive. But already, both Russia and China have accumulated enough gold to implement gold standards. It is now overwhelmingly in their interests to do so.

From Sergey Glazyev’s recent article in a Russian business newspaper, it is clear that settlement of trade balances between members, dialog partners, and associate members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) optionally will be in gold. Furthermore, the Russian economy would benefit enormously from a decline in borrowing rates from current levels of over 13% to a level more consistent with sound money.

To understand the consequences, in this article the comparison is made between the western alliance’s fiat currency and deficit spending regime and the Russian-Chinese axis’s planned industrial revolution for some 3.8 billion people in the SCO family. China has a remarkable savings rate, which will underscore the investment capital for a rapid increase in Asian industrialisation, without inflationary consequences.

With a new round of military action in Ukraine shortly to kick off, it will be in Putin’s interest to move from passivity to financial aggression. It will not take much for him to undermine the entire western fiat currency system — a danger barely recognised by a gung-ho NATO military complex.

Introduction

In the geopolitical tussle between the old and new hegemons, we see the best of strategies and the worst of strategies, where belief is pitted against credulity. It is the season of light and the season of darkness, the spring of hope and the winter of despair…

Recalling some of Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines from his Tale of Two Cities to describe the current state of global politics sums up the potential of a new industrial revolution throughout Asia and much of the rest of the under-developed world (the best of times), compared with the western alliance abetted by its military arm, NATO, which is determined to suppress the plans for the new hegemons at its own peoples’ expense (the worst of times). Ironically, the nations which will benefit most from the western alliance’s proxy war are those which align themselves with its enemies. 

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End the War, You Idiots! By Declan Hayes

Posted on February 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Proponents of the U.S.’s proxy war in Ukraine were certainly idiots. It’s past time to end it. From Declan Hayes at strategic-culture.org:

NATO should stop their Pontius Pilate hand-wringing about sending their upgraded Tiger tanks to Ukraine’s wrecking yards as they are damned whether they throw good tanks after bad, or if they do not. The best NATO can do is to form a line of defense stretching from the brothels of Romania in the south up through Poland’s and onwards to the pimple states of the Baltic and the big mouthed women leaders of Sweden and Finland. Ukraine, like Vietnam and Afghanistan before it, is a lost cause. NATO should end this war by packing its bags, going home and allowing Zelensky’s thugs await their fate on their own.

The Americans can send their Bradleys, the British their Challenger tanks, the French their Leclercs and the Germans their Leopards. Russia will destroy all of them and all crews unfortunate enough to man them. If Hitler’s Tigers could not stop the Russian tide, nor will they.

Though the British can boast to their hearts’ content about their invincible Challengers, those British wunderwaffe weapons will break down and need repair when they reach Ukraine’s killing fields. That is assuming Russia does not send them to Hades before they first see action. Showcasing your wunderwaffe weapons in Ukraine is one thing. Prevailing, as the Wehrmacht discovered, is another.

No plan, the legendary German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke declared in his 1871 ‘Ueber Strategy’ On Strategy essay, survives its first contact with the enemy. This will certainly be the case with NATO’s Tigers, which will fare as poorly as the Wehrmacht’s tanks did at Stalingrad and at Kursk, history’s biggest ever tank battle, when von Manstein, von Kluge and some of the Reich’s other great commanders faced Zhukov, Popov and their endless columns of T34s, which were more suited to Ukraine’s terrain than were the Reich’s wunderwaffe tanks, the Challengers, Leopards, Bradleys and Leclercs of their day.

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What’s Next, by Helmholtz Smith

Posted on January 29, 2023 | 1 comment

Russia can wait a while if it intends to launch a big offensive in Ukraine, but it will want to do so before NATO sends in large quantities of additional and more sophisticated weapons. From Helmholtz Smith at sonar21.com:

I don’t know what the Russians are going to do in Ukraine and neither does anyone else outside of their high command. But there sure have been a lot of wrong predictions. Leaving aside the Western propaganda mill (of which more below), serious observers seem to get the timing wrong. We know the correlation of forces favors Russia but we expect things to happen more quickly. We agree that Moscow was expecting something shorter, less bloody and quicker at the beginning and was probably surprised by the resistance of the Kiev regime and NATO’s unhinged support. Therefore there was a re-examination and the call-up of further forces. Thus far we are in agreement – it’s the timing of the next step that we seem to get wrong.

I’ve been thinking about why this is so and I have come to the following conclusions. By now everybody who is paying attention knows that the Ukraine battlefield is part of a world war in which those who control the US empire are trying to hold onto their dominance. For those outside the NATO propaganda bubble there is general agreement that

  1. Russia is winning both in the Ukraine battlefield and the wider theater.
  2. Time is on Russia’s side.

First the Ukraine battlefield. The first aim in war is to destroy the enemy’s power and that Russia is doing, especially in the Bakhmut slaughterhouse. Kiev is determined to stand and fight here and the Russians are quite happy to let them do so – “artillery conquers and infantry occupies” – and that is what we see here. Slowly slowly the Russian forces advance over mountains of Ukrainian bodies. In the last week or so Russian forces have begun to advance on other fronts too. This grinding away can continue until Ukraine collapses because it is easier for the Russians to let the enemy come to them than go after them. Meanwhile Russian missiles destroy the infrastructure Kiev needs to continue the war. Time and developments favor Russia and there is no incentive to make “big arrow” movements.

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War Is a Racket… Tanks a Lot, Now Give Us F-16s! By The Strategic Culture Editorial Board

Posted on January 28, 2023 | 3 comments

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! From The Strategic Culture Editorial Board at strategic-culture.org:

The vampiric orgy of weapons going to Ukraine could provoke a terrifying world war and global catastrophe.

No sooner had the United States, Germany and other NATO powers announced the major release of main battlefield tanks for Ukraine, the Kiev regime immediately started demanding the supply of American-made F-16 warplanes.

The attitude is incorrigible. Chutzpah on steroids, or perhaps cocaine.

As Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky gloated this week shamelessly and without a hint of irony to corporate honchos in Florida, the war in his country means “big business opportunities” for the West. This clownish figure was formerly a comedian and actor before becoming a politician. Now he can add pimping to his grubby career.

For weeks in the Western states there have been tortuous public discussions about whether to send tanks to support the Kiev regime against Russia. Then abruptly, the U.S., Germany and other NATO allies have one by one unceremoniously shirked the taboo and are promising delivery of the heavy armor weaponry. The Biden administration declared it will send around 30 units of M1 Abrams. Germany is to send about 14 Leopard 2 tanks as are several other European NATO members who have the German-made vehicle in their inventories. Britain has announced it will supply about 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks and France is considering supplying Leclerc main battlefield units.

The numbers involved are way short of the 300 demanded by the Kiev regime and will not deliver the much-vaunted and totally unrealistic “victory” over Russia. The tokenism is, however, part of an enormous war racket. It’s all about pumping up more profiteering rather than any principle or serious strategic objective in Ukraine, apart from destabilizing Russia and trying to isolate Moscow internationally. The danger is, however, if the powder keg is stoked any further, the risk of an unintended conflagration becomes a growing probability.

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Germany the Weakest Link in NATO’s War Tracks, by Finian Cunningham

Posted on January 28, 2023 | 1 comment

Germany has been a doormat for the U.S. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

When the Leopard hulls are wheeled back with their turrets blown off, the political price for Berlin will become unbearable.

Germany is being played like a fiddle and the sound is a pathetic and plaintive one. Only days after Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany would not be supplying its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine to fight against Russia, Berlin has done an embarrassing U-turn. The Leopards are coming.

Germany is to send “a company” of these fearsome battlefield weapons which amounts to about 14 of them, according to reports. What is more, Berlin is giving the proprietary authorization for other NATO members to also re-export the German-made tank to Ukraine.

Last Friday at a NATO-sponsored war summit at the U.S. Air Force Base in Ramstein, Germany, the Scholz government surprised many observers by resisting mounting calls from the United States and other NATO allies to release the Leopards. Scholz has been saying for months that he did not want to provoke Russia into an escalation of hostilities by such a move. How many times has he said that regarding other German weapons only to buckle and cave in?

Immediately after the Ramstein meeting, the pressure on Berlin was ratcheted up. The U.S., Britain, Poland and the Baltic states castigated and shamed Germany for showing cowardice. Warsaw taunted that it would send some of its Leopards regardless of Berlin’s say-so, thereby snubbing the German protocol that as the manufacturer of the tank it must authorize any re-export of the weapon.

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‘Doomsday clock’: 90 seconds to midnight, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Russia was supposed to be defeated and regime-changed by now. Instead, Russia is wiping the floor with Ukraine and the world is as close as ever been to nuclear warfare since World War II. From Pepe Escobar at thesaker.is:

The Doomsday Clock, set by the US-based magazine Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been moved to 90 seconds to midnight. 

That’s the closest ever to total nuclear doom, the global catastrophe.

The Clock had been set at 100 seconds since 2020. The Bulletin’s Science and Security Board and a group of sponsors – which includes 10 Nobel laureates – have focused on “Russia’s war on Ukraine” (their terminology) as the main reason.

Yet they did not bother to explain non-stop American rhetoric (the US is the only nation that adopts “first strike” in a nuclear confrontation) and the fact that this is a US proxy war against Russia with Ukraine used as cannon fodder.

The Bulletin also attributes malignant designs to China, Iran and North Korea, while mentioning, only in passing, that “the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States, New START, stands in jeopardy”.

“Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026.”

As it stands, the prospects of a US-Russia negotiation on New START are less than zero.

Now cue to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov making it very clear that war against Russia is not hybrid anymore, it’s “almost” real.

“Almost” in fact means “90 seconds.”

So why is this all happening?

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World War III: Has It Begun? By James Rickards

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Historians may well look back and say World War III began in either 2014 (Maidan coup) or 2022 (Russian invasion). From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

World War III: Has It Begun?

Has World War III already begun?

That’s a serious question and deserves serious consideration by investors. A wave of analysts and commentators have warned that the war in Ukraine could spin out of control and escalate into World War III.

One variation on that theme is that the war could escalate into a nuclear war with tactical nuclear weapons deployed. Most point a finger at Russia as the party that will launch a nuclear strike out of desperation at a failing campaign in Ukraine.

Actually, the opposite is true.

The Russian campaign is not failing (it has been on hold for several months awaiting the right conditions to launch a winter offensive). You just don’t hear about it in the mainstream media, which is essentially a propaganda outlet for Ukraine.

And the party most likely to use nuclear weapons first is the U.S. in order to save face and destabilize Russia once Ukraine is on the brink of collapse.

Reality Check

Many people have a hard time believing that. They’ve been told that Putin is the devil incarnate and would probably like to destroy the world. We like to think that in modern times we’re sophisticated and above falling prey to propaganda. Unfortunately, it isn’t true.

The fact is the U.S. did wage the only nuclear war in history from Aug. 6–9, 1945 and had a successful outcome. I’m not getting into the morality of it here, one way or the other. I’m just being objective.

Either way, another nuclear war could not be contained and it would be tantamount to World War III. It amounts to the same thing.

But my point is different. It’s not that we may be headed to World War III; it’s that we’re already there. The issue of when wars in general and world wars in particular begin and end is not as clear cut as many believe. There are many examples.

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Pretend-O-Rama, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on January 27, 2023 | 1 comment

Ukraine is shining a spotlight on both Russia’s ascent and the U.S.’s descent. From James Howard Kuntler at kunstler.com:

I doubt that many Americans — even the masses sunk in vaccine smuggery and obsessive Trump-o-phobia — believe that America’s Ukraine project is working out for us. Of course, to even begin thinking about this debacle, you must at least suspect that our government is lying about virtually everything it has its hand in. Name something it is not lying about, I dare you.

So, what is the Ukraine project about? To use that sad-ass country as a vector to disable and destroy Russia. You can’t over-state the stupidity of that objective. And why did we want to do that? Because… reasons. Oh? And what were they? Well, Russia was… there. Oh? And what was it doing? Trying to take over the world? Uh, no. It was actually just trying to be a normal European nation again after its traumatic 75-year-long experiment with communism, which ended in 1991.

And then, after that, coming along pretty well under Mr. Putin. Did I say that? Yes, I did, because it is a fact. Russia wrote new private property laws, made commerce legal again, and allowed its citizens to do business. Russia wasn’t threatening any other nations, most particularly not its former province, Ukraine. It had even invited Ukraine to be a sovereign member of its trade association, the customs union, with a bunch of other regional states who had rational interests in good regional relations. That’s what set off the maniacs at the US State Department — under Secretary John Kerry, a.k.a. the haircut-in-search-of a-brain — who, in 2014, decided to overthrow Ukraine’s government.

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This Time It’s Different, by Douglas Macgregor

Posted on January 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

The U.S.’s proxy war against Russia is a bust. From Douglas Macgregor at theamericanconservative.com:

Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally.

Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory. This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different.

Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions.

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As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candid about the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.”

Alexei Arestovich, President Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” was more direct. He expressed his own doubts that Ukraine can win its war with Russia and he now questions whether Ukraine will even survive the war. Ukrainian losses—at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead—have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks.

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