Tag Archives: Ukraine

What Brought Biden to the Table? By Ted Snider

Posted on January 25, 2022 | 2 comments

Is the Biden administration backing off on Ukraine? Has there been an outbreak of sanity? From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

No one knows whether the recent talks between the US and Russia will produce results. But they happened. And they have led to the promise of further talks. What, after a quarter century of Russian cries, brought Biden to the table?

The US long ago left its place at the table. Diplomacy has yielded its seat to military pressure and economic sanctions. America now always insists on the need to use force: Putin only understands force; Iran only responds to sanctions. Antony Blinken himself, America’s top diplomat, has said that “force can be a necessary adjunct to effective diplomacy.” “We must supplement diplomacy with deterrence,” he added. “Words alone will not dissuade the Vladimir Putins and Xi Jinpings of this world.”

He’s wrong, though. Diplomacy has consistently worked with China; it accomplished the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran when sanctions, sabotage and threats failed; it has worked in the many arms controls agreements with Russia, and it has worked, when honored, with North Korea.

The US thinks the world only respects force and not reason because the US only respects force and not reason. They assume of others what they discover in themselves. The US long ago exchanged diplomats for torturers and arm twisters, whether it is the torture of military threats or the arm twisting of economic strangulation.

If diplomacy has failed the US, it has failed for only two reasons. Either they have broken promises that were showing promise, as they did with Iran, or they have not engaged in diplomacy sincerely, demanding that the other country make the core concession the US demands without being willing to make the core concession the other country desires.

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Psaki Recommends Ukrainians Just Take A Kickboxing Class And Have A Margarita

Posted on January 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As Russia continues to amass forces to invade Ukraine, sources say Ukrainians are feeling down about the whole situation. To help them deal with a very depressing week, White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki recommended Ukrainians just unwind with some kickboxing classes and margaritas to make themselves feel better.

“Listen, I know this is a very sad time,” said Psaki. “I want to encourage you to feel those emotions. Then go do some kickboxing, or maybe some hot yoga or pilates, and then drown your sorrows in tequila while at brunch with your girlfriends. Sometimes, that’s all you can do!”

Foreign policy experts and State Department officials agree that this may be the only option left available to Ukrainians who want to live in a free country apart from Russian tyranny since they already tried fighting Russians with all the blankets Obama sent them and it didn’t work very well.

To help ease the suffering of Ukraine, the Biden administration has offered to send them $68 Billion in tequila mixers and free N95 masks.

Psaki later clarified that Biden has committed to evacuating Burisma executives before Putin invades.

https://babylonbee.com/news/psaki-recommends-ukrainians-just-take-a-kickboxing-class-and-have-a-margarita

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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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Biden’s Ukrainian Albatross, by Daniel McAdams

Posted on January 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

In 2014 the Obama administration orchestrated a coup in Ukraine. Once you’ve replaced a government with one more to your liking, it can become a tar baby that sticks to you whether you like it or not. Such is the case with Ukraine’s hapless and not particularly attractive government, which is holding on to the U.S. government for all it’s worth. From Daniel McAdams at ronpaulinstitute.org:

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Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell is given credit for popularizing the “Pottery Barn” rule of foreign policy. Though he denies using that exact phrase, in arguing against what became the disastrous 2003 US attack on Iraq Powell made the point that, as in Pottery Barn, “if you break it, you own it.”

Bush and his neocons – ironically with the help of Colin Powell himself – did indeed break Iraq and the American people as a result “owned” Iraq for the subsequent 22 years (and counting). It was an idiotic war and, as the late former NSA chief Gen. Bill Odom predicted, turned out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.”

Attacking and destroying Iraq – and executing its leader – not only had no value in any conceivable manner to the United States, it had negative value. In taking responsibility for Iraq’s future, the US government obligated the American people to pick up the tab for a million ransacked Pottery Barns.

There was no way out. Only constant maneuvering and manipulation to desperately demonstrate the impossible –  that the move had any value or even made any sense.

So it is with Ukraine. In 2014 the Obama/Biden Administration managed to finish what Bush’s neocons started a decade before. With the US-backed overthrow of the Ukrainian government that year, the US came to “own” what no one in their right mind would ever seek: an economic basket case of a country with a political/business class whose corruption is the stuff of legend.

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Anonymous Officials Claim There’s An Evil Russian Plot Again But The Evidence Is Secret Again, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 23, 2022 | 1 comment

Recycling propaganda from the government is not journalism. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Major western news publications are running a story about a sinister plot by the Russian government, and — you may want to sit down for this — the sources of the report are anonymous, and the evidence for it is secret.

The New York Times reports that according to anonymous individuals within the US and British governments, Russia is currently plotting to topple the existing government of Ukraine in some way using some method and then somehow install a puppet regime that is sympathetic to Moscow using some sort of means. What specifically those means and methods might be are not revealed to us in this very serious news report.

“The communiqué provided few details about how Russia might go about imposing a new government on Ukraine, and did not say whether such plans were contingent on an invasion by Russian troops,” the Paper of Record informs us. “British officials familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent was both to head off the activation of such plans as well as to put Mr. Putin on notice that this plot had been exposed.”

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UKRAINE CRISIS: US ‘Toolboxes’ Are Empty, by Scott Ritter

Posted on January 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Biden administration doesn’t have a clue as to what it would do if Russia invaded Ukraine. From Scott Ritter at consortiumnews.com:

The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people, says Scott Ritter.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled, 90-minute summit in Geneva yesterday, after which both sides lauded the meeting as worthwhile because it kept the door open for a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What “keeping the door open” entails, however, represents two completely different realities.

For Blinken, the important thing appears to be process, continuing a dialogue which, by its very essence, creates the impression of progress, with progress being measured in increments of time, as opposed to results.

A results-oriented outcome was not in the books for Blinken and his entourage; the U.S. was supposed to submit a written response to Russia’s demands for security guarantees as spelled out in a pair of draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO in December. Instead, Blinken told Lavrov the written submission would be provided next week.

In the meantime, Blinken primed the pump of expected outcomes by highlighting the possibility of future negotiations that addressed Russian concerns (on a reciprocal basis) regarding intermediate-range missiles and NATO military exercises.

But under no circumstances, Blinken said, would the U.S. be responding to Russian demands against NATO expanding to Ukraine and Georgia, and for the redeployment of NATO forces inside the territory of NATO as it existed in 1997.

Blinken also spent a considerable amount of time harping on the danger of a imminent military invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces said to be massing along the Ukraine-Russian border. He pointed out that any military incursion by Russia, not matter what size, that violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, would be viewed as a continuation of the Russian “aggression” of 2014 and, as such, trigger “massive consequences” which would be damaging to Russia.

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Security U.S. Says ‘Wants Peace Not War’ as It Arms Ukraine to the Teeth, by Finian Cunningham

Posted on January 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Watch what the do, not what they say. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

Washington has decided to ramp up the push for war against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy – and using a twisted narrative about Russian aggression and invasion.

American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is shuttling across Europe this week vowing that Washington “desperately wants peace not war” with Russia. This touchy-feely sentiment comes amid reports of additional American and British weapons supplies heading to the NATO-backed Kiev regime.

Ukraine has already been massively weaponized by the United States since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 brought to power a Neo-Nazi regime obsessed with antagonizing Russia. The Biden administration has boosted inventories for anti-tank missiles and other lethal weaponry with plans for further increases. Now it emerges that additional supplies are on the way from both the U.S. and Britain. Britain is to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine along with “military advisors”.

Moscow this week condemned the increased flow of weapons to Ukraine, saying it is recklessly stoking already fraught tensions. The new supply of anti-armor missiles from the U.S. and Britain – reported only days after high-level talks on regional security between Russian and NATO officials were conducted last week – would seem to be one more proof that the Western powers are secretly pushing for war with Russia despite rhetoric appealing for a diplomatic solution.

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Russia, Ukraine et al: What Next? By Patrick Armstrong

Posted on January 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

The overconfidence of people who have nothing to be confident about can be a recipe for travesty and/or tragedy. From Patrick Armstrong at unz.com:

To Moscow, Ukraine is not the problem, Washington is. Or, as Putin might put it: Tabaqui does what Shere Khan tells him to and there is no point in dealing with him, go straight to Shere Khan. That is what Moscow is trying to do with its treaty proposals.

For the same reason, Moscow is not much concerned with what the EU or NATO says; it assesses that they are Tabaquis too.

The current propaganda meme in Washington is that Russia is going to “invade Ukraine” and absorb it. It will not: Ukraine is a decaying, impoverished, de-industrialised, divided, corrupt and decaying mess; Moscow does not want to take responsibility for the package. Moscow is fully aware that while its troops will be welcomed in many parts of Ukraine they will not be in others. Indeed, in Moscow, they must be wishing that Stalin had returned Galicia to Poland rather than giving it to the Ukrainian SSR after the War and stuck Warsaw with the problem. This does not, however, rule out the eventual absorption of most of Novorossiya in ultimo.

The second delusion in Washington is that if Moscow did “invade Ukraine” it would start as far away from Kiev as possible and send tank after tank down a road so that the US-supplied PAWs could exact a heavy cost. That is absolutely not what Moscow would do as Scott Ritter explains. Moscow would use standoff weapons to obliterate Ukrainian troop positions, C3I assets, assembly areas, artillery positions, ammunition dumps, airfields, ports and the like. At its choice. It would all be over quite quickly and the Javelins would never be taken out of their boxes. But that is the extreme option as Ritter explains.

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Good for Putin for Exposing U.S. Hypocrisy, by Jacob G. Hornberger

Posted on January 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

If the U.S. stations troops and weapons in Ukraine, why can’t Putin do the same in Cuba and Venezuela? From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

At the risk of being accused of befriending one of the two premier enemies (or rivals, opponents, adversaries, or competitors) of the U.S. national-security establishment (the other one being China), I feel compelled to commend Russian President Vladimir Putin for exposing the rank hypocrisy of U.S. officials.

I must admit that I couldn’t help but smile when I read that Putin was threatening to send Russian troops to Cuba and Venezuela in response to U.S. attempts to absorb Ukraine into NATO, which would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to send U.S. troops, missiles, and tanks to Russia’s border.

When I read Putin’s statement, I knew immediately what the U.S. response would be  … and that it would not be a principled one. Not surprisingly, U.S. officials didn’t like Putin’s idea at all, as reflected by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan exclaiming, “If Russia were to move in that direction, we would deal with it decisively.”

Whoa! Now just wait a minute. We keep hearing U.S. officials saying that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign country (despite the fact that the U.S. government helped foment the regime-change operation that installed a pro-U.S. puppet regime in the country). As such, U.S. officials maintain that Ukraine has the rightful authority to join NATO, that old Cold War dinosaur that should have gone out of existence decades ago.

But Cuba and Venezuela are independent sovereign countries too, aren’t they? As such, don’t they have the authority to invite foreign troops into their countries? And just as the U.S. government establishes military bases all over the world, including in countries that are located close to Russia, why doesn’t Russia have the authority to do the same in Cuba and Venezuela?

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Breathe Easier: Blinken, Lavrov Meet Friday, by Ray McGovern

Posted on January 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Maybe we won’t have Armageddon in Ukraine after all. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Whoa! Could this mean that reports of the death of U.S.-Russia security talks are greatly exaggerated? What about the impasse, the deadlock? Might it mean no Russian invasion of Ukraine – at least not yet?

Actually, figuring out what the planned bilateral talks Friday in Geneva mean requires no PhD in political science. Nevertheless, the notion is so alien to consumers of the corporate media that one can, I suppose, give the New York Times credit for admitting, matter-of-factly:

“[The fact] that Mr. Lavrov [Russia’s foreign minister] will meet with [Secretary of State] Mr. Blinken on Friday indicates that Russia is prepared for at least one more round of diplomacy.”

In the same obvious vein, the Washington Post quoted a “senior State Department official” (probably Blinken himself) explaining that the planned meeting on Friday shows that “diplomacy is not dead…We are prepared to continue to engage with Russia on security issues in a meaningful, reciprocal dialogue. We will see this Friday if Russia is prepared to do the same.”

So, can we be somewhat hopeful that war can be avoided? Not so fast.

Persistent Paradigm

Don’t get your hopes up. The editors at the Washington Post and elsewhere were careful to avoid suggesting that there is much possibility that peace might be given a chance – despite the miraculous resurrection of talks that were said to be dead and buried for a few days. Tuesday evening the Post headlined its web version of the story: “Blinken to meet Russian counterpart as White House warns Moscow could attack Ukraine ‘at any point’. That awkwardly balanced headline was changed overnight to “Ukraine invasion seen as looming”, and the new headline sat atop the same article, which ran as the page-one lead in the print edition Wednesday morning.

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