Tag Archives: Ukraine

Putin’s Quid: No Offensive Missiles in ‘ABM’ Sites, by Ray McGovern

Posted on January 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Negotiation and a settlement between the U.S. and Russia is not an impossibility. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Take heart, most of you who fear war rather than profit from it. You would not know it amid the gloom and doom about “another Russian invasion” of Ukraine, but diplomacy – not war – is about to break out this month.

As senior U.S. and Russian negotiators begin talks early next week in Geneva, the makings of a first-step-in-the-right-direction deal are already at hand. And for this we can thank Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin for serious, attentive, one-to-one conversations in the past several weeks.

You don’t need a degree in Kremlinology or tea leaves to understand how this came about and what led to the Biden-Putin talks: in one key respect the second (Dec. 7, virtual) was a carbon copy of the first (June 16 in Geneva).

Both came at Biden’s initiative, after Russia moved tens of thousands of troops near the border with Ukraine ready to stave off, or respond to, Ukrainian government threats to take back the Donbass and Crimea. By April 2021, things had come to a head, culminating in President Biden’s strange call to President Putin on April 13. (It is a safe guess that it was Putin who called first and left a “voicemail” saying: “Your unleashed Ukrainians and the American crazies abetting them are playing with fire; please call me – and quickly“).

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Russia is Done Playing Politics Over Ukraine, by Tom Luongo

Posted on January 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin is telling Europe as much as the U.S. that it’s time to fish or cut bait. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

MOSCOW, RUSSIA – DECEMBER 1, 2021: Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova gives a weekly press briefing. Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

As we approach next week’s big summit between the U.S./NATO and Russia over tensions in Ukraine it’s important to understand just where things between everyone stands. Russia’s Foreign Ministry, normally the soul of understatement and infuriating politeness, has been ratcheting up the blunt over the past couple of months.

Nothing else seems to get the attention of U.S. and European so-called diplomats and decision-makers.

These are people who arrogantly believe it is their right and privilege to demean everyone else they don’t respect or agree with. They sincerely don’t like it when it comes back at them.

To that point, the recent dustup between Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova and the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell was outstanding. Zakharova is thorough, eloquent, and nearly always correct.  She accomplishes these things because she has the truth on her side.

Borrell published an interview with the German propaganda rag, Die Welt, which read like an application for his long-term commitment to Arkham Asylum for solipsism bordering on insanity in which he complained Russia had no right to make demands of the EU or NATO.

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Six Things the Media Won’t Tell You About Ukraine, by Ted Snider

Posted on January 6, 2022 | 1 comment

Why should the American people know anything about the wars the government chooses to fight? From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

On January 10, American and Russian officials will meet to discuss Putin’s proposal on mutual security guarantees. Western media and political analysts have cast Putin’s demands that NATO not expand further east to Ukraine and that NATO not establish military bases in former Soviet states nor use them to carry out military activity as bold and impossible.

Here are six crucial pieces of background that the western media will not tell you.

The NATO Promise

Putin’s demands are only bold if it is bold to ask NATO to keep its promises; his demands are only impossible if it is impossible for NATO to keep its promises.

On February 9, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker assured Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany – a huge concession – NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany. The next day, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made the same promise to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadz. Earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had already publicly declared in a major speech that there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union.”

Recently declassified documents make it clear that all the western powers, including not only the US and Germany but also the UK and France, repeatedly made Russia the same promise.

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Nuclear War Over Ukraine? By Eric Margolis

Posted on January 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Everybody realizes that Ukraine is not worth a nuclear war or even a hot non-nuclear war. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean war won’t happen. Sometimes wars are sparked by the inconsequential. Remember World War I? From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

How many American soldiers will die in the battle for Luhansk? Or Kerch? Not 1 in 1,000 Americans could find these drab Ukrainian (formerly Russian) industrial cities on a map.

How many Americans are aware that a unit of the Florida National Guard is stationed in western Ukraine, of all places? It’s just a training mission, says the Pentagon. Right. Training how to pick oranges. This from the ‘invincible’ US military (I used to be a member) that got its backside whipped in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

No matter. The US, says President Biden, is geared up for a major fight in this obscure coal-mining region of the former Soviet Union. US Navy vessels and aircraft now challenge Russia’s Black Sea and Azov Sea borders. NATO units probe Ukraine’s air and land borders.

Washington is warning Moscow not to react to US military intrusions. And, above all, not to invade Ukraine – which was part of historic Russia and the Soviet Union until the USSR fell apart after a US-engineered coup in Kiev that created western-orientated Ukraine. Today, Ukraine is governed by a former TV comic whose career was financed by shady oligarchs and western interests.

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2022, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on January 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Russia issue could well be the one in which we most wish our president wasn’t an idiot. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

I remember when 1984 was in the distant future. We wondered if our destiny was going to be Big Brother’s police state. But 1984 turned out to be the middle of the Reagan years. Liberals didn’t like Reagan’s rhetoric, but his policies worked. Supply-side economics cured stagflation, and we were working to end the cold war. It was difficult not to like a president who could quip in response to an assassination attempt on his life, “I forgot to duck.”

New ideas reinvigorated US economic and foreign policy. Our future had brightened.

Soviet President Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany on the assurance from the George H.W. Bush administration that in exchange NATO would not move one inch to the East.

But the Clinton regime, with Republican Bob Dole egging them on, dishonored the word of the United States government and moved NATO to Russia’s borders, thus restarting the Cold War that Reagan and Gorbachev had ended.

In a series of lawless actions–the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the bombings of Pakistan territory–together with dismissive treatment of Russia, Washington, lost in its arrogant hubris as “the world’s only superpower,” awoke and aroused Russia and brought her out of her docility.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2007 Putin said that the lawless behavior of the US was undermining peaceful relations based in international law. He said Washington’s monopolistic dominance in global relations left no room for the interests and concerns of other countries and he criticized Washington for unbridled hyper use of force in international relations.

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As the Old Year Closes, War Awaits Us in the New Year, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on December 31, 2021 | Leave a comment

Hard to believe anyone could be stupid enough to start a war over Ukraine, but the Biden administration keeps setting new lows in stupidity. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

In 2022 two issues will come to a head: One is whether Western peoples can fight off the effort to destroy their civil liberty behind a smokescreen of an orchestrated “Covid pandemic.” If not, they will become residents of police states.

The other is whether the West has the intelligence to accommodate Russia’s legitimate security concerns. If not, at the least American power will be broken and at worse life in the Western world will end in nuclear war.

As the Old Year Closes, War Awaits Us in the New Year

https://ria.ru/20211221/ukraina-1764715058.html  (machine translation)

Defense Minister Shoigu: American PMCs are preparing a provocation with chemical weapons in Donbass 
13:57 12.21.2021 (updated: 15:05 12.21.2021)
Shoigu announced the preparation by the United States of a provocation with chemical weapons in the east of Ukraine.

MOSCOW, December 21 – RIA Novosti. private military companies (PMCs) US located in the Donetsk region are preparing a provocation with chemicals in eastern Ukraine , said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu .
“To commit provocations in the cities of Avdiivka and Krasny, Liman Tanks with unidentified chemical components have been delivered,” Shoigu said at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry board with the participation of President Vladimir Putin .

According to the ministry, about 120 representatives of American PMCs who train Ukrainian special forces arrived in the region.

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If Russia’s Not Bluffing, Then What’s in the Cards? by Finian Cunningham

Posted on December 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

We could be a bit more sanguine if Putin didn’t outmatch everyone on our side by at least 50 IQ points. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

Vladimir Putin is renowned as a strategic chess player. Looks like the world is going to see what his skills are for playing poker.

Russia has said it is not bluffing about its categorical security demands ahead of top-level negotiations with American counterparts in Geneva. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed this week that Russia will take a hard line, indicating that the time for vague compromises is over.

History has amply demonstrated that words and promises are expendable when it comes to U.S. and NATO leaders giving assurances to Russia of non-aggression. Three decades of NATO militarism encroaching on Russia’s borders is proof enough.

Henceforth, there will have to be legally binding rules to manage security. That still does not guarantee adherence. Several arms control treaties have been jettisoned by U.S. administrations since the Cold War. Nevertheless, a legal framework is a basic premise. However, after that, there must be a credible alternative warning mechanism to enforce rules.

The demands put forward by Moscow stipulate that the U.S.-led NATO military alliance ceases any eastward expansion, including giving membership to former Soviet Republics such as Ukraine and Georgia. Secondly, the U.S. must withdraw strike weapons that have been placed in eastern Europe such as those in Poland and Romania or any others planned for installment in the Baltic states.

That the United States has responded by holding negotiations in Geneva on January 10 as well as NATO talks with Russian officials on January 12 shows that Washington and its allies have registered the gravity of Moscow’s concerns. Those concerns have been simmering for years over NATO’s relentless expansion since the end of the Cold War. But the recent tensions over Ukraine in which Russia has been baselessly accused of planning to invade have made Moscow’s patience boil over.

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What If U.S., NATO Talks Are Cover for More Aggression Towards Russia? By Finian Cunningham

Posted on December 29, 2021 | 1 comment

Will the U.S. and NATO bloviate, ignore the Russian ultimatum, and continue to foment war in Ukraine and Eastern Europe? From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.org:

If there are no prompt responses to Russia’s legitimate security concerns, then the next phase entails a more robust military-technical realm

It is quite clear that the clock is ticking on how the United States and its NATO allies respond to Russia’s urgent security proposals.

For Moscow, if the forthcoming talks do not produce firm security guarantees in short order, then the suspicion is that the U.S. and NATO are using the engagement as a cover for continuing a long-term military build-up against Russia.

Russia’s strategic patience has worn out. Years of relentless encroachment by the United States and NATO on Russia’s territory has reached the point where Moscow has peremptorily declared red lines that must be respected. In short, no more eastward expansion by the U.S.-led military bloc and, secondly, the removal of U.S. strike weapons from neighbouring states.

The latest phase in the long post-Cold War game has been the vicarious menacing with Ukraine. Moscow could be criticized for being too complacent about the bad faith and backsliding by NATO since the late-1990s in ripping up assurances to Russia over no eastward expansion. But the NATO-backed Kiev regime threatening Russian people in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s national security is the last straw. Better late than never.

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Exit Nord Stream 2, Enter Power of Siberia 2, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on December 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Russia, turning towards Asia, can survive without Europe. From Pepe Escobar at strategic-culture.org:

Military superpower Russia, having had enough of U.S./NATO bullying, is now dictating the terms of a new arrangement.

Coming straight from President Putin, it did sound like a bolt from the sky:

“We need long-term legally binding guarantees even if we know they cannot be trusted, as the U.S. frequently withdraws from treaties that become uninteresting to them. But it’s something, not just verbal assurances.”

And that’s how Russia-U.S. relations come to the definitive crunch – after an interminable series of polite red alerts coming from Moscow.

Putin once again had to specify that Russia is looking for “indivisible, equitable security” – a principle established since Helsinki in 1975 – even though he no longer sees the U.S. as a dependable “partner”, that diplomatically nicety so debased by the Empire since the end of the USSR.

The “frequently withdrawing from treaties” passage can easily be referred to as Washington in 2002 under Bush Jr. pulling out of the ABM treaty signed between the U.S. and the USSR in 1972. Or it could be referred to as the U.S. under Trump destroying the JCPOA signed with Iran and guaranteed by the UN. Precedents abound.

Putin was once again exercising the Taoist patience so characteristic of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: explaining the obvious not only to a Russian but also a global audience. The Global South may easily understand this reference; “When international law and the UN Charter interfere, they [the U.S.] declare it all obsolete and unnecessary.”

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We’ve Seen the Ultimatum, What Is the “or Else”? By Patrick Armstrong

Posted on December 28, 2021 | 2 comments

Russia is issuing a rare public ultimatum. Notwithstanding U.S. and European bluster, the Russians have the muscle to back it up. The U.S. and European should proceed very carefully. The articles linked in this one from Martyanov and the Saker are well worth reading. From Patrick Armstrong at unz.com:

We are making it clear that we are ready to talk about changing from a military or a military-technical scenario to a political process that really will strengthen the military security… of all the countries in the OCSE, Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space. We’ve told them that if that doesn’t work out, we will create counter-threats; then it will be too late to ask us why we made such decisions and positioned such weapons systems.

Мы как раз даем понять, что мы готовы разговаривать о том, чтобы военный сценарий или военно-технический сценарий перевести в некий политический процесс, который реально укрепит военную безопасность <…> всех государств на пространстве ОБСЕ, Евроатлантики, Евразии. А если этого не получится, то мы уже обозначили им (НАТО – прим. ТАСС), тогда мы тоже перейдем в вот этот режим создания контругроз, но тогда будет поздно нас спрашивать, почему мы приняли такие решения, почему мы разместили такие системы.

— Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko quoted by TASS

Moscow has issued an ultimatum to USA/NATO. It is this: seriously negotiate on the issues laid out here and here. Some of them are non-negotiable.

Ultimatums always have an “Or Else” clause. What is the “or else” in this case? I don’t know but I’ve been thinking and reading other peoples’ thoughts and some ideas/guesses/suppositions follow. They are the order that they occurred to me. Whether Moscow has such a list in front of it or not, it certainly has many “counter-threats” it can use.

Why now? Two possible answers, each of which may be true. US/NATO have been using “salami tactics” against Russia for years; Moscow has decided that a second Ukraine crisis in one year is one thin slice too many. Second: Moscow may judge that, in the USA’s precipitous decline, this will be the last chance that there will be sufficient central authority to form a genuine agreement; an agreement that will avoid a catastrophic war. (The so-called Thucydides Trap).

Of course I don’t know what Putin & Co will do and we do have to factor in the existence of a new international player: Putin, Xi and Partners. Xi has just made it clear that Beijing supports Moscow’s “core interests”. It is likely that any “counter-threats” will be coordinated. The Tabaquis have responded as expected but maybe (let’s hope so) Washington is taking it more seriously.

Other commentaries I think are worth reading: Martyanov, Bernhard, Saker, Doctorow. The Western media is worthless as a source of independent thinking (typical clichéfest from the BBC – bolstered by The Misquotation) but maybe the WaPo shows that the wind is starting to blow from a different quarter: “The Cold War is over. Why do we still treat Russia like the Evil Empire?“

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