Tag Archives: Ukraine

The Birth of the Baby Twins: Russia’s Strategic Swing Drives NATOstan Nuts, by Pepe Escobar

What will NATO do about Russia’s recognition of the Donbass breakaway states? Will it hurt Russia enough to make a difference? From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

“You don’t believe in the principle of indivisible security? Fine. Now we dictate the security rhythm.”

History will register that the birth of the baby twins – Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – only a few hours before 2/22/22, was simultaneous to the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world.

As my columns have stressed for a few years now, Vladimir Putin has been carefully nurturing his inner Sun Tzu. And now it’s all in the open: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

The thunderbolt was months in the process of being meticulously polished. To paraphrase Lenin, who “created Ukraine” (copyright Putin), we did live many decades in only these past few days. It all started with the detailed demands of security guarantees sent to the Americans, which Moscow knew would be rejected. Then there was the Russia-China joint statement at the start of the Winter Olympics – which codifies not only the strategic partnership but also the key tenets of the multipolar world.

The culmination was a stunning, nearly one hour-long address to the nation by Putin shortly after the Russian Security Council live session deliberating on the request for independence by the DPR and the LPR (here is a condensed version.)

A few hours later, at an emergency UN Security Council meeting, Russian Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya precisely outlined why the recognition of the baby twins does not bury the Minsk agreements.

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The Evidence for Invasion the US Could Produce, by Scott Ritter

“Because I said so” is not generally regarded as dispositive proof. From Scott Ritter at consortiumnews.com:

U.S. envoy Adlai Stevenson II presents aerial photos of Russian missiles in Cuba to the U.N. Security Council in the presence of USSR ambassador Valerian Zorin, Oct.25, 1962. (U.S. Government/Public Domain)

While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to distance himself from the ghosts of U.N. Security Council meetings past – namely the disastrous Feb. 5, 2003 performance of his predecessor Colin Powell peddling manufactured intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq — the world once again bore witness last week to a U.S. secretary of state presenting a supposedly intelligence-based case about a looming armed conflict.

“I am here today,” Blinken said, trying to remove himself from Powell, “not to start a war, but to prevent one.”

But like Powell, Blinken produced no evidence at all to the U.N. to back up his assertion that Russia is “preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days,” even though he could have. Rather than produce fake evidence, as Powell had, he just produced nothing at all.

Blinken only had words, blithely accusing Russia of seeking “to manufacture a pretext” for an invasion of Ukraine, whether by fabricating a terrorist bombing inside Russia; (a jab at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been accused of false-flag attacks of Moscow apartment buildings to generate support for the Second Chechen War in 1999); the discovery of a mass grave; staging a drone strike against civilians or the use of chemical weapons.

After such a “false flag,” Russian would call for a military response “to defend Russian citizens or ethnic Russians in Ukraine” and would then invade Ukraine, Blinken said.

In the past, when the U.S. took to the floor of the U.N. Security Council to hurl accusations of malfeasance at Russia, American diplomats would present incontrovertible intelligence to back up its claims.

This was done in October 1962, when Adlai Stevenson showed the world U-2 photographs proving the Russians had deployed missiles in Cuba. Again, in September 1983, Jeane Kirkpatrick played audio tapes of intercepted communications which proved Russian military aircraft shot down Korean Airlines flight 007.

Blinken brought no such proof. His was just a verbal assurance that this was not a repeat of Colin Powell’s performance. This time, the U.S. should just be trusted to tell the truth.

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History Points to the US as Perpetrator of Crisis in Ukraine, by Mike Whitney

The Russians may have checkmated the U.S. and NATO today, but the article is a useful reminder of who the world’s number one aggressor has been since World War II. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

“We want to remind you that Russia has never attacked anyone throughout its history.” Dmitri Peskov, Kremlin spokesman

“NATO leaders are now engaged in the most blatant and irresponsible destabilisation and hybrid war operation since they used Islamic terrorists to destroy Libya and attempted to use them to break up Syria.” Nick Griffin, political analyst and former Member of the European Parliament, Unz Review

Here’s your US Foreign Policy quiz for the day: Which of these militant organizations has the United States supported over the years?

  1. Marxist guerillas in East Syria (The YPG, The People’s Protection Units, The Syrian Democratic Forces)
  2. Far-right Neo-Nazis in Ukraine (Ukrainian Security Services, Azov Special Operations Detachment)
  3. Islamic extremists in Syria, Libya, Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan. (aka– Al Qaida, Al Nusra etc)
  4. Anti-leftist Death Squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua
  5. All of the above

If you picked “Number 5”, then pat yourself on the back. That is the right answer. The US has “armed and trained” all of these disparate groups and still supports many of them today. And the reason Washington supports them, is because they help to advance America’s geopolitical agenda. It doesn’t matter if the group is on the “right” or the “left”. It doesn’t matter if they are religious extremists or Godless atheists. What matters is whether they can be turned into an effective fighting force capable of achieving America’s strategic objectives. That is the overriding goal.

Bottom line: Ideology is irrelevant. What matters to Washington is power; pure, iron-fisted power.

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How to Make an Electric Car Make Sense, by Eric Peters

Who says there’s no serendipity? If the Biden administration gets its war in Ukraine, it should drive up the price of oil and consequently the price of gas, maybe to $6 or $7 per gallon. That in turn will drive demand for electric cars, another big Biden administration goal. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

An electric car may soon make “sense” – if the price of gas rises to $6 ot $7 per gallon. This might happen as soon as the next couple of days – weeks – if the Biden Regime is successful in turning an internal territorial squabble between the Russians and other Russians – or at least, between people whose territorial squabble poses a far lesser danger to Americans than $6 or $7 per gallon gas – into a “splendid little war.”

Oil – from which gasoline is made – already approaches the $100 per barrel mark. Without a “splendid little  war” to push it beyond that mark. The “media” – as the public relations combine for the corporate-government nexus styles itself – is working hard to egg that on.

“My guess is that you are going to see $5 (gas) at any triple digit (oil) price and you might get to $6.50 or $7, energy analyst Dan Dicker told Yahoo! Finance.

With a “splendid little war” – the term is associated with the contrived (by America) Spanish-American War – the cost to fill-up could rise so high it may seem “sensible” to charge up. And this might be precisely why the regime has such a woodie for war with Russia over a territorial squabble that could trigger exactly what the regime wants, for Americans.

Another “crisis.”

This being desperately needed as the last “crisis” wanes – and to salve the real crisis, which is the waning legitimacy of the Biden regime. The president selected is viewed by a majority – including many of those who may have voted for him – as a TelePrompted geriatric, a kind of American Brezhnev who barely has the stamina to walk under his own steam away from the podium, after having read the TelePrompter. It is not merely that he is old and obviously in decline, mentally as well as physically. It is that the country is obviously in decline. People – voters – care far less about Critical Race Theory and the merits of sexual fungibility than they do about how much it is costing them to live. How much it is costing them to eat.

It is incomprehensible – from a rational, national self-interested point-of-view – to fixate as it were some kind of emergency for this nation on the internecine territorial squabbles of the Russians while Americans are paying $10 for a 2×4 and  $3.50 for gas that cost $2 before the current president was selected. When the shelves at American supermarkets begin to resemble the shelves of Soviet supermarkets.

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Ukraine Implementing Minsk Accords & Ending Conflict ‘Very Last’ Thing US, UK Want, Ex-MEP Says, by Nick Griffin

The U.S. doesn’t want Russia and Europe, particularly Germany, to draw closer. From Nick Griffin at unz.com:

With the situation in eastern Ukraine deteriorating each day, the West keeps on promoting its “Russian threat” rhetoric and pledges “never-before-seen” sanctions on Russia should it invade Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kiev keeps violating the Minsk accord and continues to shell Donbass, forcing thousands of people to flee to Russia.

Nick Griffin, political analyst and former Member of the European Parliament, reflects on the geopolitical, economical and historical reasons for the West trying to force Russia into war with Ukraine, why the collective West turns a blind eye on systemic violations of the Minsk agreement by Kiev, and why no one in the West cares about the humanitarian disaster in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in Donbass.

Sputnik: Why is the West not only ignoring but also encouraging Kiev’s provocations in Donbass?

Nick Griffin: The Washington and Westminster cabal are desperate to force Vladimir Putin to abandon his policy of self-restraint and negotiation. They intend to leave him no option but to use military force in defence of the Russian population of Donbass. So the NATO leaders are now engaged in the most blatant and irresponsible destabilisation and hybrid war operation since they used Islamic terrorists to destroy Libya and attempted to use them to break up Syria.

Their operation against Russia is in fact even more desperate than the campaign of lies and aggression against Syria, because the stakes are even higher. The West promoted conflict in the Middle East in the hope of gaining a geopolitical advantage. The attempt to force Russia into war in Ukraine, by contrast, is not really about promoting the geopolitical interest of the Dollar Empire – it is about its very survival.

The US is no longer the self-confident colossus that bestrode the world a few decades ago. America in 2022 is a financial, political, economic, military and social basket case, and its UK ally is in the same very leaky boat. The liberal Anglo world is further disturbed by the situation in Canada, which is now in the critical phase of a historic struggle between the Trudeau regime and a large and well-organised section of the working population.

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“Operation Cyclone: Ukraine Edition” – is this the real plan? By Gavin O’Reilly

Is the plan to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan for Russia? From Gavin O’Reilly at off-guardian.org:

For almost three months, the Western mainstream media, in a move not dissimilar to its previous assertions that Saddam Hussein had the capability to launch WMDs within 45 minutes, or that Iran was building a nuclear bomb, has repeatedly claimed that Russia is planning an ‘imminent’ invasion of its Western neighbour Ukraine.

Ukraine has been under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan, a CIA and MI6-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with the Russian Federation.

With the ongoing collapse of the global COVID-19 media narrative following the highly coincidental timing of last month’s World Economic Forum Davos Agenda virtual event, a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine has now taken centre stage amongst corporate media outlets with a track record of promoting war and regime change in countries refusing to kowtow to the demands of the US-NATO hegemony.

A media narrative which has seen thousands of US and British troops being deployed to Eastern Europe as a result – a highly provocative action and one, that should even a minor miscalculation occur amidst the current tensions, could easily escalate into a full-blown military conflict between East and West.

Recent comments by current Ukrainian President Zelensky however, in which he poured cold water over the idea of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the recent supply of over 90 tonnes of weaponry to Kiev by the United States amidst the current tensions, and US President Joe Biden stating himself that Washington would not engage militarily with Russia, would suggest that although the possibility of the current crisis inadvertently spiralling into a global conflict between Russia and NATO remains, that that is not the current intention of the West.

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The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It’s About Russia), by Caitlin Johnstone

How long before asking government officials for proof of their assertions becomes a criminal offense? From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Well you’ll be shocked to learn that, while the Ukraine invasion we’ve been told for weeks was happening any day now still has not occurred, the US and UK have declared that Russia attacked Ukraine in an invisible and unverifiable way for which the evidence is secret.

“The White House blamed Russia on Friday for this week’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks and warned of the potential for more significant disruptions in the days ahead,” AP reports. “Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said the U.S. had rapidly linked Tuesday’s attacks to Russian military intelligence officers.”

“Technical information analysis shows the GRU was almost certainly involved in disruptive DDoS attacks,” adds a statement from the UK Foreign Office.

No evidence for this claim has been provided beyond the assertive tone with which American and British officials have uttered it, but that likely won’t stop arguments from western narrative managers that this “attack” justifies immediate economic sanctions.

https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1494797904556572675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1494797904556572675%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaitlinjohnstone.com%2F2022%2F02%2F19%2Fthe-burden-of-proof-is-always-on-the-ones-making-the-claim-even-if-its-about-russia%2F

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Is the Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden’s “Wag the Dog” Moment? by Andrew J. Bacevich

Would a war against Russia have any better outcome than U.S. interventions elsewhere?  The question almost answers itself. From Andrew J. Bacevich at thenation.com:

The people now gunning for a showdown with Putin were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein two decades ago—with the same promises of a happy outcome.

Putin and Kerry

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow. (Alexei Druzhinin / AP Photo)

While some wars may be necessary and unavoidable, a war pitting Russia against Ukraine—and potentially involving the United States—doesn’t make the cut. Yet, should such a war occur, some members of the American commentariat will cheer. They have yearned for a showdown with Vladimir Putin. The depth of their animus toward Putin and the hyperbole it inspires is a bit of a puzzle that deserves examination.

A veteran New York Times correspondent charges that Putin “has put a gun to the head of the West.” In an op-ed recently published in the Times, a former US national security official accuses President Biden of “sending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily.” “In an era when fascism is on the march,” a Boston Globe columnist warns, “much more may hang in the balance” than simply the security of a single country on the far eastern fringe of Europe.

A sense of impending doom punctuates the taunts: With unnamed fascists gathering outside the city gates and the very survival of the West at risk, the sitting president succumbs to cowardice. Whence does such overheated language come? What does it signify?

One obvious explanation is the unvarnished Russophobia pervading the ranks of the American political elite. With roots going at least as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution, disdain for Russia only deepened across several decades of Cold War. Although the Cold War ended a generation ago, this habitual animus survives fully intact, nowhere more so than in Washington. Demonizing Russia is an easy sell.

In international politics, most crimes, no matter how heinous, are forgivable. Even those perpetrated by the Nazi regime do not figure in day-to-day US relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Nor, as it turns out, does the United States hold Ukraine’s collaboration with the Third Reich against it.

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The Evil and Malevolence of the Pentagon’s Brilliant Strategy in Ukraine, by Jacob G. Hornberger

Has the Pentagon boxed Russia in on Ukraine? From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

The crisis in Ukraine demonstrates the sheer malevolent brilliance of Pentagon strategists. Yes, granted, it’s an evil strategy, but nonetheless one cannot help but admire it (in a negative way) for its sheer malevolent ingenuity.

The strategy has involved maneuvering Russia into having to make a choice between two scenarios, both of which have bad consequences. The choices are these: (1) Russia does not invade Ukraine, in which case the U.S.-controlled NATO absorbs Ukraine, which means U.S. bases, missiles, tanks, and troops permanently situated on Russia’s borders; or (2) Russia invades Ukraine and takes over the reins of government, in which case U.S. officials portray Russia as a horrific aggressor that now threatens the rest of Europe, the United States, and all mankind.

Like I say, it’s an evil strategy but everyone has to concede that it is absolutely malevolently ingenious.

The box into which the Pentagon has placed Russia reminds me of the equally ingenious (again, in a negative way) strategy that President Franklin Roosevelt employed to get the United States into World War II. Prior to U.S. entry into the war, the American people were overwhelmingly opposed to entering the conflict, especially after the fiasco of U.S. intervention into World War I.

This was at a time when U.S. presidents were still complying with the constitutional provision that requires them to secure a declaration of war from Congress before being able to wage war legally and constitutionally against another nation-state. Owing to the overwhelming opposition to entering the war, FDR knew that he could not get Congress to declare war on Germany.

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Russian Invasion Prognosticators Are Like Cult Leaders Repeatedly Predicting The Apocalypse, by Caitlin Johnstone

Will the Russian invasion happen before or after the end of the world? From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Back in November The Military Times published a Ukrainian intelligence claim, which was picked up and repeated by numerous other mainstream publications, alleging that Russia was going to invade Ukraine by the end of January.

Then in late January when the calendar debunked the Military Times incendiary headline “Russia preparing to attack Ukraine by late January”, that same outlet ran a much less viral story with the headline “Russia not yet ready for full-scale attack says Ukraine“.

This past Friday the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Melinda Haring, tweeted the following:

“Putin has big weekend plans in Ukraine: 1) he’s going to cut power and heat, knock out Ukrainian navy and air force, kill general staff and hit them with cyber attack; 2) then install pro-Russian president and 3) resort to full-scale military invasion if Ukraine doesn’t give in.”

And, of course, none of these things happened. The weekend came and went, Haring issued a sheepish admission that she got it wrong, then immediately turned around and proclaimed that “Putin may strike on Weds”, then later pivoted to “We’ve been so focused on Russian troops and tanks that we missed Moscow’s strategy: strangle Ukraine’s economy and sap the resolve of its people.”

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