WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia [Archive] - Page 39 - The Project Avalon Community Forum

Rizotto

8th May 2023, 09:37

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/05/04/depleted-uranium-courts-accept-cancer-risk-denied-by-uk-army/

Depleted Uranium: Courts Accept Cancer Risk Denied by UK Army
May 4, 2023

Italian veterans may be winning compensation for their wartime exposure, but Phil Miller reports the British army insists it is safe to supply Ukraine with the toxic tank shells.

By Phil Miller

More than 300 Italian veterans who developed cancer after being exposed to depleted uranium ammunition have won court cases against Italy’s military. Some of the cases were brought by their bereaved relatives.

The judgments have mounted in recent years, with Italian courts repeatedly finding a link between cancer and service in the Balkans where such weapons were fired.

Although Italy does not have depleted uranium weapons in its own arsenal, Italian police and soldiers were deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo where NATO allies fired the controversial ammunition in the 1Depleted uranium (DU) is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste from nuclear power plants. Britain uses it to make armour-piercing tank shells, which are now being supplied to Ukraine.

Scientific debate continues about DU’s long-term risks to human health and the environment in post-conflict zones. British ministers insist it is low risk, and that there is only “some potential heavy metal contamination localised around the impact zone.”

But in the Balkans and Iraq, many believe it has caused cancer. That view was shared in 2009 by a coroner in England, who held an inquest into the death of Stuart Dyson, a British army veteran.

Dyson cleaned tanks during the Gulf war in 1991 and later developed a rare cancer, passing away in 2008. An inquest jury found it was “more likely than not” that depleted uranium had caused his death.
The Ministry of Defence rejected the ruling and refused to pay his widow a pension for those who die from service. By contrast, the widow of Captain Henri Friconneau, a French gendarme who served in Kosovo, was granted a service pension when he later died from cancer.

An appeal court in Rennes ruled in 2019 that Friconneau’s death was due to his exposure to DU dust. France’s Interior Ministry accepted the judgment and added his name to a monument for those who died on operations in Kosovo.

When in Rome

But it is in Italy where the highest number of veterans have won compensation. One family received a 1.3 million euros pay out in 2015 after the court of appeal in Rome found “with unequivocal certainty” a link between exposure to depleted uranium dust and cancer.

The Il Fatto newspaper said the judgement went further than previous rulings, as it recognised a causal link beyond just the balance of probabilities.

A more recent ruling in 2018 seen by Declassified found the court could not “rule out the possibility that a soldier who served” in the Balkans “would have been exposed to genotoxic pollutants, thus increasing the likelihood of illness.”

An Italian parliamentary commission into the issue found “shocking” levels of exposure among Italian veterans and said it had “helped sow deaths and illnesses.”

Last month, Euronews reported that 400 Italian soldiers who were exposed to DU in the Balkans had since died from cancer, and another 8,000 were suffering from the disease. They interviewed the lawyer at the centre of the litigation, Angelo Tartaglia, who urged Britain to “think about the risks and the consequences” of supplying Ukraine with DU shells.

Tartaglia said: “There’s the possibility that both Ukrainian and Russian military officials might fall ill but most importantly pollution caused by military activities could cause irreversible damage to the environment which means that civilians too would be at risk.”
‘Panic in Italy’

Depleted uranium has been a controversial topic in Italy ever since soldiers returned from Kosovo. It was discussed in 2001 by fromer Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet, which felt “the panic in Italy…[was] premature since there had been no time for cancers to have developed.”

Although Blair wanted to “appear sympathetic,” he was also anxious not to jeopardise the U.K.-U.S. special relationship as George W. Bush entered the White House.

Blair’s cabinet decided: “The government should handle this in a low key manner and avoid the impression that it was distancing itself from the United States of America — which was the country that had used depleted uranium in Kosovo — just at the moment when a new US administration was coming to power.”

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw British and U.S. forces firing the ammunition, triggering widespread concern. Britain’s Ministry of Defence recognised a “moral obligation” to help Iraq clean up the shells after the war and published the firing locations.

The same approach is not being followed in Ukraine, where Britain has supplied thousands of tank shells, including some made from DU.

Armed forces minister James Heappey has told Parliament: “British-supplied Challenger 2 tanks and depleted uranium ammunition granted to Ukraine are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). The Ministry of Defence does not monitor the locations from where DU rounds are fired by the AFU in Ukraine.”

He added: “There is no obligation on the U.K. to help clear up depleted uranium rounds fired from Challenger 2 tanks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Vicus

8th May 2023, 10:38

Russia repelled massive attack on Crimea with 22 drones at once 2023-05-07

As a result of a powerful attack on the Crimea by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian army successfully repelled the threat, destroying 22 attack drones. According to information received from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the incident occurred at night over the Black Sea.

According to the source, 22 attack drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were found in the sky over the Black Sea, on approach to the Crimean peninsula. As a result of the operation to destroy them, unmanned aerial vehicles were hit by fire from anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM) or suppressed by means of electronic warfare (EW) of the Russian military units.

The repulsion of a massive attack on the territory of Crimea is an important indicator of the readiness and effectiveness of the Russian armed forces in ensuring the security of citizens and the territory of the country. The destruction of 22 attack drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine testifies to the high level of coordination and efficiency of the Russian army in the event of a threat.

This incident also highlights the growing threat from Ukraine to Crimea.

Подробнее на: https://avia-pro.net/news/rossiya-otrazila-massirovannuyu-ataku-na-krym-srazu-22-bespilotnikami

Vicus

8th May 2023, 10:45

US asked Türkiye for access to Russian air defense system – FM 7 May, 2023

Ankara turned down a proposal that would have involved giving S-400s to Ukraine, Mevlut Cavusoglu has said

https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.05/m/6457b1622030272f52325241.jpg
S-400 air defense systems. © Sputnik/Alexander Galperin

The US approached Türkiye in the hope that the country would grant Washington access to its Russian-made S-400 air defense systems or hand them over to Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed on Sunday. Ankara refused the request on the grounds that doing so would undermine its sovereignty and independence, he added.

In an interview with the newspaper Habertürk on Sunday, Cavusoglu recounted how the US had “made offers that directly concern our sovereignty, such as giving us control of [S-400], and giving it to somewhere else.”

The minister clarified that Washington had suggested providing the air-defense systems to Ukraine, but that Ankara said no.

Türkiye received the first batch of S-400s from Russia in 2019.

Commenting on the prospects of Ankara’s return to Washington’s F-35 fighter jet program, Cavusoglu said that his country is no longer interested because it is now working on its own military aircraft.

Last March, several Western media outlets reported that the US had offered Türkiye a “return to the F-35 program” in exchange for “giving up the S-400 system and sending it to Kiev.”

Commenting on the claims, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made it clear that Türkiye’s use of the S-400s was a “done deal for us.”

“They are our property serving our defense, so it’s over,” he stressed at the time.

Erdogan’s spokesman, Fahrettin Altun, meanwhile, pointed out that “what the West must do is deliver the F-35 fighter jets and Patriot batteries to Türkiye without preconditions.”

Back in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on the Turkish defense industry and kicked the country out of its F-35 fighter jet program over Ankara’s decision to buy the Russian military hardware.

The US refused to deliver the already ordered aircraft to its fellow NATO member, claiming that Türkiye’s purchase of the Russian system “would endanger the security of US military technology.”

https://www.rt.com/news/575933-cavusoglu-turkey-us-s-400-ukraine/

Vicus

8th May 2023, 10:51

Ukrainian plot to strike airfield deep inside Russia thwarted – FSB 7 May, 2023

Kiev’s agents had reportedly planned to destroy A-50 surveillance planes

Ukrainian agents have been arrested while attempting launch a drone attack on a military airfield in central Russia, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Sunday.

According to the FSB, the agents used a small Aeroprakt A-32 plane to transport explosives from northern Ukraine to Russia’s Tula Region.

They allegedly planned to strike A-50 early warning and reconnaissance aircraft stationed near the city of Ivanovo, some 250km (155 miles) to the northeast of Moscow.

The pilot and locals recruited by Ukraine for the operation were apprehended upon landing, the FSB said.

The news comes after a string of train derailments and drone attacks on oil terminals on Russian soil. On Thursday, two UAVs tried to strike the Kremlin in what Russian officials said was an attempt by Kiev to assassinate President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine denied its involvement in the raid.

On Friday, the FSB said it that had detained two Ukrainian nationals who were planning to kill an unnamed high-ranking official working at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which sits close to the frontline.

https://www.rt.com/russia/575932-fsb-ukrainian-plot-airfield/

Vicus

8th May 2023, 11:02

Berlin court partially lifts ban on Russian flags 7 May, 2023

The country’s symbols were permitted for display at the ‘Immortal Regiment’ march on Victory Day

A Berlin administrative court has lifted a ban on displaying Russian flags during the upcoming Victory Day ‘Immortal Regiment’ march in the German capital. The ban had been imposed by the city’s police, which vowed to challenge the court’s ruling.

Berlin police announced the ruling on Sunday, stating that the flags were permitted for display at the Tiergarten Soviet-era war memorial, where the march will take place on May 9. The police said it has already appealed the ruling with the top administrative court. The judicial body is reportedly expected to produce a decision on the matter later on Sunday.

https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.05/m/6457f14c85f5401fb6766054.jpg

The police ban, which was issued on Friday, prohibited displaying Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian flags at the upcoming World War II Victory Day celebrations on May 8 and 9 over security concerns. Other symbols associated with the WWII victory, including the orange and black St. George ribbons, as well as mock military uniforms, were also banned. The restrictions did not apply to diplomats or WWII veterans. The police explained that the symbols, given the “current situation,” can be purportedly used to “justify or glorify” the Russian military operation in Ukraine.

The ban on Ukrainian flags was promptly challenged in court and overturned on Saturday, a ruling that the Berlin police chose not to challenge.

The police ban is reminiscent of the restrictions rolled out for last year’s Victory Day celebrations, which took place in the early months of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Back then, the Berlin authorities banned display of the flags of the two countries during the events, arguing it would help to keep the WWII celebrations “clearly separated from the situation in May 2022.”

Moreover, several German states have outlawed other symbols associated with Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, including the letter ‘Z’, which has been used as a tactical marking by some units of the Russian military and has since come to symbolize the Russian offensive.

https://www.rt.com/news/575935-berlin-russian-flag-ban/

Gwin Ru

8th May 2023, 14:49

...

... New interview with RFK Jr - Massive Russian missiles rain down (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xl4L_9GHf4) 33:41

https://yt3.ggpht.com/C18R3qsl2RPjGO4_ndTfiZwLb3AIj_pB6n8Tn9wDjuia4Aojs_kMDcMErExObN0ijr6YWPLHNw0=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj (https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasMacgregorStraightCalls) Douglas Macgregor SC (https://www.youtube.com/@DouglasMacgregorStraightCalls)

May 8, 2023

Colonel Douglas Macgregor discusses the war in Ukraine with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on May 6, 2023. Col Douglas Macgregor Straight Calls - Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world.

6xl4L_9GHf4

grapevine

8th May 2023, 17:39

But for Russia the world would be under the jackboot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEc-7xcDQLw
George Galloway's relevant monologue from yesterday's MOATS

Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 17:45

Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 17:50

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1655526039764758529

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https://twitter.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1655625925105528847

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 17:56

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655622869173321728

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https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1655546351294218248

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 18:12

Text:
"Protected then, Will protect now! Congratulations to the day of Victory over Nazism in the WW2".

This billboard is in Kiev, Ukraine. It shows an Azov Nazi Soldier pointing a rifle at a Soviet era soldier of the USSR.

The irony of this depiction is overwhelming. The Soviet soldier is the one who actually liberated Europe from the Nazi hordes, including the Bandera, who were the forefathers of the modern-day Azov.

UkroNazi's can try to change history, but the world remembers the truth.

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1655614547699331072

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 18:23

https://twitter.com/MatreshkaRF/status/1655622095848501253

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White Angels, then Phoenix group started coming and taking children away. They didn’t take her child away because they were hiding.

https://twitter.com/InsiderDonbass/status/1653138725071626270

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 18:32

https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1655314113340342274

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https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1655314116360151041

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https://twitter.com/zarbanthamar/status/1655358188026478592

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https://twitter.com/mossrobeson__/status/1655370980737396736

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 18:41

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655604798434033666

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655602162792116224

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Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 18:49

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655567062989692937

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655567069935460352

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jaybee

8th May 2023, 19:06

.

re this picture in post 9521.... showing the likeness to Chrystia Freeland

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvkDgBmaIAIe7y6?format=jpg&name=small

I think Klaus Schwab has a distinct likeness to Goebbels around the top lip area and if I remember right he is cagey about his family history....

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1968-101-20A%2C_Joseph_Goebbels.jpg/330px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1968-101-20A%2C_Joseph_Goebbels.jpg
source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels)

https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-EI840_schwab_FR_20140902124907.jpg
source (https://www.wsj.com/articles/klaus-schwab-inside-the-world-economic-forum-1409843416)

sorry the pic of the ghastly Schwab is so big I chose it because it shows a good view of the top lip -

the implications of the WEF creator / leader and some top politicians around the Western World having family links to Nazi Germany is chilling to say the least - especially now with the open Nazi revival in Ukraine and the West's support of it...

Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 21:07

Text:
“His Eminence Mr #Zelenskyy, embodying #ICC fight on #WarCrimes, was hailed in La Hague”. That, entirely ignoring #Ukraine’s genocide on ethnic-#Russia ppl of #Donbass reported since 2014, & the repeated executions of Russian POW. –>Thread.
Amidst all attention focus on nowadays #counteroffensive-s, it is wise to keep in mind how all it really began –Who attacked whom & why. This video ⬇️ also documents U.S. State Department’s refusal to condemn Ukr gov’s characterization of ethnic Russians as “subhuman”, and at same time consenting the shelling of Donbass civilians.

https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/1655575317954666497

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https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/1655614332355457024

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(Warning: graphic photos in articles below)

https://professorsblogg.com/2014/07/13/documenting-war-crimes-in-east-ukraine-warning-for-horrifying-images/

https://professorsblogg.com/2014/08/16/a-h-rights-appeal-based-on-most-gruesome-video-of-poroshenkos-slaughter-in-eastern-ukraine-warning-for-images/

Ravenlocke

8th May 2023, 21:15

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655648039229624320

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Tintin

9th May 2023, 11:09

Lydia Spivak outside the Brandenburg Gate 1945

An entirely charming piece of film from Berlin in 1945 after its liberation. I've chosen to place it on this thread as its appropriate in recognition of the 78th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War :flower:

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Text:

Today's Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, we remember one of the most famous moments from newly liberated Berlin. The video shows Lydia Spivak, a young Red Army woman, dancing and directing traffic in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

She was born in Volgograd and joined the war in 1942 in the ranks of the Red Army when she was only 18 years old. She was thrown into the unbelievably difficult task of capturing Berlin. Her performance was captured on film by a cameraman named Anatoly Aronov and immediately went viral around the world.

After the war she returned to her native village and worked at a library before becoming a nurse. It was there that she saw her famous photo for the first time, shown by one of her patients in the "Rabotnitsa" (The Woman Worker) magazine.

She was awarded the medals: "For the Liberation of Warsaw", "For the Capture of Berlin" and "For Victory over Germany".

Maria Limanskaya – The Inspiration Behind It All

The person responsible for inspiring this iconic moment was actually Maria Limanskaya—a Ukrainian dance teacher who had been teaching Spivak since she was 15 years old! At 98 years old today, Limanskaya is still alive and kicking! In fact, many believe that it was Limanskaya’s expertise and training that enabled Spivak to perform with such grace under such intense pressure on camera back in 1945.

When asked about her student’s performance after watching the footage decades later, Limansky said “she danced so beautifully even though there were bullets flying around them… I’m proud of Lydia.”

-------

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/Lydia_Spivak_outside_the_Brandenburg_Gate_filmed_by_Anatoly_Aronov_after_the_liberation_of_Berlin_19 45.mp4

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 13:40

There are literally hundreds of video reports about Victory Day (today, 9 May), celebrated all over Russia and the CIS states. (Besides Russia, these are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.) I'll post a few of them below.

First, here's an iconic historical photo of the Russian flag being hoisted over the Reichstag in Berlin, taken on 2 May 1945 by Yevgeny Khaldei (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Khaldei). Two soldiers did this together: 20-year-old Rakhimzhan Koshkarbaev and 19-year-old Grigory Bulatov.

https://history.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/05/rsz_reichstag.jpg

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 13:44

Text:
Speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Victory Parade. points:

- Russia rejected international terrorism and we will protect the inhabitants of Donbass. For our state there are no hostile peoples either in the West or in the East.

- The West causes conflicts and upheavals, destroys traditional values to continue dictating its own rules and, in fact, a system of robbery and violence.

- The goal of Russia's opponents is to achieve the disintegration and destruction of our country.

- Any ideology of superiority is disgusting, criminal and deadly, but Western elites still talk about their exclusivity. ▪️ Memorials are destroyed in the West, a cult of Nazism is created, this desecration is also a crime, the revanchism of those who were preparing a new campaign against Russia.

- The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the coup and a bargaining chip in the hands of the West.

- Today civilization is once again at a decisive turning point, a real war is unleashed against us.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655905880133476354
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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655903764287504385

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655903770390167553

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Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 13:44

For those who may not be familiar with the full history, here's what happened. The link to the complete article (well worth reading for history buffs) is https://telegra.ph/Capitulation-05-08-2.

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61564

DDGeopolitics/61564

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 13:48

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655917807811407873
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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655913809066840066

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https://twitter.com/TVajrayana/status/1655789297771872257

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Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 13:51

Here's just a tiny sample of all the reports:

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61600
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61579
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61584
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61629

DDGeopolitics/61600
DDGeopolitics/61579
DDGeopolitics/61584
DDGeopolitics/61629

https://twitter.com/i/status/1655859839162097665
1655859839162097665

And a little more from Putin's speech:

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61632

DDGeopolitics/61632

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 13:53

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1655916304983900161

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https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1655916313770950656

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 13:57

Text:
The massive strikes of Russian missiles and UAVs last night are not only acts of retaliation, but also the prevention of terrorist and other criminal actions of the Nazi regime.
In Kyiv, after a series of terrorist attacks against Russia, they were waiting for the Kremlin's declarations, but they preferred a concrete case to the word, and for the second day the Nazis were under rocket and bomb attacks. Moreover, the intensity of the blows does not decrease. The counter-terrorist operation began de facto, without its official announcement. Ukrainian Nazis do not recognize May 9 as a holiday, so they don’t have a holiday.
https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1655896082079965185

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https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1655903301374824450

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:05

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655688290375438337

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https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1655685885751623680

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https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar/status/1655683028855693312

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Text:
May 9, known more as a #VictoryDay - it is very special memory for all of us, who was born in USSR. 4 years of war, more than 27 millions of casualties, in every family some of loved ones do not return from that war. 1941-1945 was very difficult time not only for Russian's, but for all nations of the Soviet Union - Ukrainians, Belorussians, Kazakh's, Uzbeks, Caucasians - and they all together was defending motherland. This days Nazism is rising the head, and it is very sad for me that this is happening in #Ukraine - where I was born and live for 40 years. Attempts to re-write a history, to present a Soviet Union as equals to Nazi Germany is very worrying, this is why I'm posting a link to my first documentary what I was produced about #WW2 - "The Will of Victory". There is no narrative in that film, only footage that we are restored and colorized and music. My dear friend Robert Ferretti directed that film, film was awarded at Beverly Hills Film festival in 2012. I dedicate that post to everyone who sacrificed they lives to win over the nazism and liberate Ukraine and Europe out of nazi occupation. https://youtu.be/iRI4J1eAdw8

https://twitter.com/OskarJaeger/status/1655747056089321473

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:16

Text:

Germany has forgotten WWII. Russia will have to repeat the vaccination against Nazism. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: "The EU must remain united, continue to support Ukraine and not be intimidated by a show of force in Moscow. We must not be intimidated by a show of force, we must remain true to our support for Ukraine for as long as it takes. The message is that the past will not be able to defeat the future"
http://t.me/vicktop55/15144

https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1655887625390006272

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https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1655917149603475456

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655925427578482688

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Text:
For Americans who don't know, this plaque is the 'Victory Handshake' between US and Soviet (Russian) soldiers located at the US World War II Memorial in Washington DC.

It represents Elbe Day, April 25, 1945, the day Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River, near Torgau in Germany, marking an important step toward the end of World War II in Europe.

I never thought I would have to explain to many of my fellow Americans that, yes, the US and Soviet Union (Russia) were allies fighting against the Nazis in WWII.

Everyday we lose US WWII veterans. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important for the rest of us to tell their story. As a nation we owe it to them to be sure the truth is never lost.

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1655767031789043712

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:28

https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1655942099920130049

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https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1655930186112827395

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https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1655871135282503680

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https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1655868895167754242

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:35

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655909840882118659

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655851529050681345

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655847165200334848

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655846070159839232

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655845392670666752

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655844850372321281

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655854204756566016

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:40

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1655844330274435074

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Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 14:56

Text:

‼️🇷🇺🇵🇱 Russian Ambassador in Poland was prevented from laying flowers at the memorial cemetery in Warsaw

The Russian ambassador arrived at the memorial cemetery to honor the fallen and lay flowers, but a crowd of angry Poles prevented him from doing so, demanding that he remove the St. George Ribbon. He was forced to leave.
"Rashists, Rashists," the crowd shouted.

Last year in Poland, our diplomats were doused with red paint on May 9.
/RIAN/
http://t.me/RVvoenkor
https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1655895994008064004

1655895994008064004

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1655896302713024515

1655896302713024515

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:06

https://twitter.com/KitKlarenberg/status/1655925996141572096

1655925996141572096

Article here,

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/09/neo-nazi-terror-threat-grows-as-ukraine-fighters-jailed-in-france/

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:11

https://twitter.com/TheGrayzoneNews/status/1655823402173693952

1655823402173693952

Article here,
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/09/ukrainian-media-car-bombing-russian-writer/

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:15

https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1655841308085301248

1655841308085301248

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:31

https://twitter.com/wallacemick/status/1655908278348439556

1655908278348439556

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:40

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655939637867868164

1655939637867868164

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655941369700159489

1655941369700159489

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 15:53

https://twitter.com/ProfitMaker_X/status/1655762496777510913

1655762496777510913

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:01

https://twitter.com/Kanthan2030/status/1655894647754063872

1655894647754063872

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:15

https://twitter.com/Habash_Zebulon/status/1562502145324498945

1562502145324498945

https://twitter.com/Habash_Zebulon/status/1562502155898339329

1562502155898339329

https://twitter.com/Habash_Zebulon/status/1562502168195637250

1562502168195637250

https://twitter.com/Habash_Zebulon/status/1562502184721608704

1562502184721608704

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:20

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655963192894390272

1655963192894390272

Hamish

9th May 2023, 16:21

Hello,

DDGeopolitics/61728

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:25

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1655964383305138177

1655964383305138177

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:35

(This may be important Tidbit of news, because of the Fatima and other predictions posted on Avalon)

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655964773165481985

1655964773165481985

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:40

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655973385208201232

1655973385208201232

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 16:46

NATO continues to feed Ukraine with promises of membership in the Alliance

In another interview, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg said that Ukraine "will definitely become a member", the whole question is the timing of when this will happen.
“First of all, all NATO allies agree that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance. All allies agree that Ukraine has the right to choose its own path, that the decision is made not by Moscow but by Kyiv. All Allies agree that NATO's doors remain open. The question is when this will happen, I cannot tell you about the timing of this, ” - Stoltenberg.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655972029315653633

1655972029315653633

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 16:46

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61603

DDGeopolitics/61603

:flower::flower::flower:

Thank you, Grandfather, for the Victory

By Mikhail Krivov

Thanks to my grandfather for the Victory,
For all the war years
For the fact that he was for our land
He always boldly went on the attack

For the fact that he did not regret
Losing all his young years
For the fact that the Motherland did not flinch
He left as a boy to defend and protect

For the fact that there were no cowards
Among friends and fellow soldiers:
Uzbeks, Russians, Belarusians,
Georgians, Tatars and Moldovans

For standing with his chest
In the way of bullets, bombs and bayonets
Freeing our land:
The cities, towns and villages

For crying like a little boy
When he buried his friends
For keeping the memory of the fallen
In his heart and soul

For the fact that we live in a world
Without bombs, explosions and shooting
For the happiness of living with the freedom of the wind
Without knowing the horrors of war

Thanks to my grandfather for the Victory
From all the Russian mothers
For protecting other people's children with his body
All in the name of peace.

~~~

Very poignant, of course. I believe the poem was written in 2008. Fifteen years later, we can see this verse was premature:
For the fact that we live in a world
Without bombs, explosions and shooting
For the happiness of living with the freedom of the wind
Without knowing the horrors of war
The Great Patriotic War isn't actually quite over yet.

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 17:03

https://twitter.com/TVajrayana/status/1655959988592885765

1655959988592885765

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 17:06

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655971162675990529

1655971162675990529

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 17:11

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655967745853255681

1655967745853255681

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655967997587083264

1655967997587083264

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655968182132174848

1655968182132174848

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1655968442078330883

1655968442078330883

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 17:16

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655943083970940935

1655943083970940935

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 17:26

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655964841230872576

1655964841230872576

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655853031991148545

1655853031991148545

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655970914855419910

1655970914855419910

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655834047887622144

1655834047887622144

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1655829939441082369

1655829939441082369

t5eUJ5WIoMI

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 17:30

https://twitter.com/TVajrayana/status/1655959988592885765
1655959988592885765There are quite a few other videos about this, including from Brian Berletic, Alex Christoforou, Alexander Mercouris, Clayton Morris and Kim Iverson.

It's actually a very serious situation for Gonzalo. The problem is that [arguably in a Ukrainian court] he probably has broken the current laws of that country. And the authorities there will be wanting to make a humiliating public example of him.

But if he stays healthy and unhurt physically, he might just have to wait for the war to end and for the Kiev regime to surrender, flee, or be toppled, one of which is very likely to happen before the end of this year. In the meantime, as we can see all around us, genuine journalism is a dangerous activity requiring increasing levels of courage.

Gonzalo was very cavalier (one might say reckless, given his circumstances), but he always stood for the truth. That's something that's so very very important now, more so than ever before in our lifetimes.

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 17:43

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1655971162675990529

1655971162675990529So great to see. :heart:

Closely related here is Mashika (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/member.php?45714-Mashika)'s 2021 thread: :flower:

We should pay real respect for our war veterans (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?116958-We-should-pay-real-respect-for-our-war-veterans&highlight=veterans)

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:23

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1655893300094615554

1655893300094615554

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1655872258148036609

1655872258148036609

:ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:
https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1655862812902666240

1655862812902666240

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1655866719095902210

1655866719095902210

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1655949917595238405

1655949917595238405

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1656000474061914112

1656000474061914112

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:26

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1655984469747048448

1655984469747048448

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:39

https://twitter.com/TsarofCrimea/status/1655723117270974465

1655723117270974465

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Text:
According to the tradition that has existed for many years, on the eve of #ДеньПобеды78 on the Slavic farm near
@Toronto
🍁, a multinational celebration of the Heroes #ВОВ , the feat of the Soviet Warrior-Liberator and the entire Soviet people, who saved the world from the "brown plague" took place. #НиктоНеЗабыт #9мая

https://twitter.com/Russia_Toronto/status/1655791566861074439

1655791566861074439

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:44

https://twitter.com/SenoreAmore/status/1656000665611640844

1656000665611640844

https://twitter.com/MatreshkaRF/status/1656003563833774082

1656003563833774082

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 18:50

Thank you, Grandfather, for the Victory

By Mikhail Krivov

Thanks to my grandfather for the Victory,
For all the war years
For the fact that he was for our land
He always boldly went on the attack
[ ... ]
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61748

DDGeopolitics/61748

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:51

https://twitter.com/JamesClay1917/status/1655894844357713922

1655894844357713922

https://twitter.com/JamesClay1917/status/1655894848631721986

1655894848631721986

https://twitter.com/JamesClay1917/status/1655894854101000193

1655894854101000193

https://twitter.com/JamesClay1917/status/1655894859729739776

1655894859729739776

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/16/vxen-m16.html

Canadian imperialism’s fascist friends—Part 1: Ottawa’s decades-long alliance with the Ukrainian far-right and the NATO war on Russia
15 May 2022
[PART ONE] [PART TWO] [PART THREE] [PART FOUR][PART FIVE]

This is the first article in a five-part series.

The US and its NATO allies, Canada included, are waging war on Russia in all but name. Their governments, corporate media and establishment parties claim that the NATO powers are funneling tens of billions of dollars in weaponry to Kiev in order to protect Ukraine’s “sovereignty” and save its “democracy.” In reality, their provocative actions have brought the world to the precipice of a global conflagration fought with nuclear weapons.

As the World Socialist Web Site has exhaustively documented, American imperialism long planned for and instigated war with Moscow over Ukraine. It led NATO’s eastward expansion over the past three decades to encircle Russia, and goaded Putin into launching his reactionary invasion by refusing to so much as discuss Moscow’s security concerns. Washington and Wall Street are determined to subjugate Russia, plunder its abundant resources and tighten thereby the military-strategic encirclement of China.

In pursuit of these predatory geostrategic and economic objectives, the US and its allies have aligned with Ukraine’s far-right parties and fascist militia; that is, with forces that venerate and seek to emulate the Ukrainian fascists who collaborated with and sought the Nazis’ patronage during World War II. In pursuit of an ethnically “pure” Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian fascists participated in some of the most monstrous crimes of the 20th century, including the Holocaust.

Washington, aided and abetted by its German and Canadian allies, used the fascist Right Sector as its shock troops in the February 2014 coup that removed Ukraine’s elected pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. The imperialist powers then placed in power a government committed to harnessing Ukraine to NATO and the European Union. Washington subsequently rearmed and reorganized Ukraine’s armed forces, overseeing the merger of the fascist Azov Battalion into Ukraine’s security forces. Today these fascists comprise an important part of Ukraine’s elite troops. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has himself boasted, they are pivotal frontline fighters in the Russian-majority Donbas region.

Canadian imperialism has long sought to pass itself off as an altruistic force in global affairs. But Ottawa is playing an especially provocative and belligerent role in the Ukraine war. This is a continuation of its substantial role in the war’s preparation and instigation.

Under both Liberal and Conservative governments, Canada has worked closely with Washington, first in its drive to expand NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics; and then, since 2016, to permanently deploy NATO expeditionary forces on Russia’s borders. Canada leads one of NATO’s four enhanced Forward Presence Battle Groups in Poland and the Baltic states, and routinely dispatches warplanes and warships menacingly on Russia’s doorstep. From 2015, hundreds of Canadian Armed Forces’ trainers were deployed to Ukraine, where they worked alongside American and British military personnel to reorganize Ukraine’s armed forces. This included helping integrate and train the fascists of the Azov battalion.

The rest of the article and parts 2 -5 are here,

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/16/vxen-m16.html

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 18:58

https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1655729865662910470

1655729865662910470

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 19:00

No further comment needed. :facepalm:

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61750
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/61761

DDGeopolitics/61750
DDGeopolitics/61761

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 19:36

https://twitter.com/onlydjole/status/1656001922770382849

1656001922770382849

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 19:55

Full Putin speech dubbed in English

Text:
Full Putin Speech at the Victory Day Parade 2023

"We see how in certain countries they ruthlessly and cold-bloodedly destroy memorials to Soviet soldiers, demolish monuments to great commanders, create a real cult of the Nazis and their proxies, erase and demonize the memory of true heroes. Such profanation of the feat and sacrifices of the victorious generation is also a crime, an outright revanchism on the part of those who were cynically and blatantly preparing a new march on Russia and who brought together neo-Nazi scum from around the world for this."

URA!

https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/1655948103206465539

1655948103206465539

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 20:10

Russia Victory Day, Big Putin Speech, Massive Missile Strike; Syria Rejoins Arab League, War Ended

oSSDSWquumU

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 20:36

https://twitter.com/MatreshkaRF/status/1656013617047773194

1656013617047773194

Ravenlocke

9th May 2023, 21:25

https://twitter.com/AKorybko/status/1654769337847230465

1654769337847230465

http://zububrothers.com/2023/05/06/the-american-government-arguably-played-a-role-in-kievs-arrest-of-us-journalist-gonzalo-lira/

The American Government Arguably Played A Role In Kiev’s Arrest Of US Journalist Gonzalo Lira

The US Government isn’t even hiding its complicity in journalist Gonzalo Lira’s persecution after one of its leading information warfare assets in that country, the transgender mercenary Michael John Cirillo, admitted to colluding with the secret police on this case, told the media that he plans to testify against his compatriot, and even plans to brag about this to Congress when he visits it later this month.

Dual American-Chilean national Gonzalo Lira was recently arrested by Ukraine’s secret police on charges pertaining to “wartime propaganda”, for which he faces the possibility of 5-8 years in jail. The US Government’s (USG) silence on this incident completely contrasts with its hysteria over Wall Street Journal (WSJ) employee Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia last month on charges of espionage after he was caught red-handed soliciting classified military-industrial information from a regional lawmaker.

This is a betrayal of American principles since the freedom of speech is regarded as a sacred right of all its citizens no matter where they might be at any given time. Regardless of whatever one might think about Lira’s views and the particular piece of Ukrainian legislation that was cited as the basis for arresting him, the USG is supposed to support the rights of its nationals abroad. This is especially so whenever they’re arrested for expressing an opinion and/or practicing journalism like he was.

Its silence in the face of this scandalous incident suggests a degree of complicity in, or at the very least tacit approval of, Lira’s arrest since nothing else cogently explains the conspicuous lack of any response. These suspicions are further reinforced by the fact that one of the USG’s leading information warfare assets in Ukraine, transgender mercenary Michael John Cirillo, admitted to the Daily Beast that he colluded with the SBU on its case against Lira and even plans to testify against him.

In his exact words, “I’ve already given my sworn statement to SBU about Gonzalo Lira several months ago and expect to be called as a witness in his prosecution.” Cirillo also added on Twitter that “When I’m on Capitol Hill in 10 days, no doubt the arrest of Gonzalo Lira will be a prime topic of conversation.” Instead of seeking his release, the USG is relying on one of its top propagandists in that country to pursue Lira’s conviction, prior to which their proxy brazenly plans to boast about this to Congress.

It should also be noted that Cirillo told this to Julia Davis, who’s banned by Russia on the basis of having worked against its national interests at the behest of hostile powers, which obviously refers to the USG in this context. Her article also mentions that she obtained exclusive footage of Lira’s arrest, which could only have been obtained by the SBU, whose employees shared it with her precisely because they know that she’s one of their patron’s most reliable agents and would thus use it to humiliate Lira in her piece.

These facts lead to the conclusion that the USG is indeed complicit in Ukraine’s arrest of this dual American national. It’s not even hiding its complicity in Lira’s persecution either after one of its leading information warfare assets in that country admitted to colluding with the secret police on this case, told the media that he plans to testify against him, and even plans to brag about this to Congress. The USG is perversely proud of this since it hopes to pressure critics of its proxy war into self-censoring.

This objective also clearly includes its own citizens like Lira, who the USG hates with a passion since his brave reporting from Kharkov discredited many of their claims about this conflict. It could have simply requested that Kiev deport him in order to lessen the damage that he’s inflicted on their information warfare operations, but it preferred to make an example out of him by pursuing his prosecution. Cirillo’s role in this incident and his plans to brag about it to Congress leave no doubt about the USG’ complicity.

Bill Ryan

9th May 2023, 21:33

No further comment needed. :facepalm:
DDGeopolitics/61750
DDGeopolitics/61761

I looked up the figures to check they were correct.

US deaths in WWII: 418,000.
UK deaths in WWII: 450,000.
Russian deaths in WWII: 27,000,000.

Satori

10th May 2023, 01:44

The “Allied powers” did not win WWII. The “Axis powers” did not lose WWII. WWII was contrived and manipulated by the then global elite and money changers, etc…. They were at “war” with themselves. That was one of the big secrets, then and even now. Compartmentalization, need to know and plausible deniability. That is, secrecy, lack of transparency and lying. Lying and secrecy is the primary official policy of all governments and supranational corporations. That, along with taxation and privatizing profits and socializing losses.

When they decided to end that particular phase of what they started, that is, WWII, they just did it. They then simply created a series of stories, with the valuable cooperation of all controlled media, and all with a common theme, and all for public consumption, about why and how that war ended, and who lost (the bad guys), and won (the good guys). Ordo ab Chao. Rebuilt what you just destroyed and put the survivors back to work. Turn swords into blow shares and commit money, so called, and resources to that, instead of war. For awhile, at least.

The same so-called elite forces in power then are in power now. They have been for a very, very long time and they will likely continue to be so.

They are doing it again. Call it WWIII if you want. It doesn’t matter. Wash, rinse, dry, repeat….

As usual, the losers will be the people and other life forms of this Spaceship Earth. Sadly.

Mike Gorman

10th May 2023, 05:03

Mike Gorman

10th May 2023, 05:08

As always Bill you summarise the situation concisely, and with devastating accuracy - Gonzalo is very similar to "Gonzo" which describes this man's style of journalism very well, Hunter S Thompson would no doubt consider him a close relative- cavalier to the point of reckless is spot on. As you say this man has been striving to provide a true picture, I just wonder at his pathology, I wish him all the very best.

BMJ

10th May 2023, 05:51

https://twitter.com/Kanthan2030/status/1655894647754063872

1655894647754063872

Yep.

Germany In Talks to Buy $3 billion Boxer CRV from Australia

(The rest of the article is behind a paywall)

Australian Financial Review
6 March 2023

Australia is negotiating its most lucrative defence export deal, with the German army planning to buy hundreds of Queensland-made armoured vehicles as Berlin builds up its military in response to Russian aggression.

Talks over the deal, which could be worth up to $3 billion, are well advanced between the Australian and German governments, and are expected to support thousands of jobs in south-east Queensland and across the broader supply chain nationally.

The first of the Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles could be delivered to Germany next year.

The Boxers are made by German defence contractor Rheinmetall, which is already supplying 211 Boxer vehicles to the Australian army under a $4.3 billion contract.

But the prospective German contract could have an even bigger production run, with Berlin interested in acquiring several hundred vehicles as part of its €100 billion ($157 billion) spending spree on new weapons.

Link: https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/germany-in-talks-to-buy-3b-of-australian-weaponry-20230305-p5cpfy

Tintin

10th May 2023, 06:21

More stirring stuff, this time (again) from Clare Daly - MEP :muscle:

Source: https://twitter.com/ClareDalyMEP/status/1656007485541556232

Text:

No public consultation. No debate. A plan rushed through behind closed doors. A unilateral declaration by an unelected Commissioner that 🇪🇺 is now "a war economy," & the people of Europe have to pay for it! Well the corks must be popping in the arms industry boardrooms tonight.

1656007485541556232

Dennis Leahy

10th May 2023, 15:58

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 18:22

https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/status/1656296759289602049

1656296759289602049

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/vatican-confirms-russia-ukraine-peace-mission/2893931

Vatican confirms Russia-Ukraine peace mission

ATHENS

The Vatican confirmed a Russia-Ukraine peace mission on Wednesday but refrained from going into further detail, saying it is at a confidential level.

There are developments, but they are, of course, confidential, said Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on the sidelines of an event at the Pontifical Lateranense University in the Italian capital of Rome, according to the state-run ANSA news agency.

“I really believe it will move forward," he asserted.

At the end of April, Pope Francis announced that the Vatican is involved in a peace mission to try to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, without disclosing details.

"There is a mission underway now but it is not yet public. When it is public, I will reveal it," the Pope told reporters on his way back from Hungary.

Both Kyiv and Moscow later denied any knowledge of the initiative.

Parolin, however, insisted that "They were not denials.”

"They had said they didn't know anything about it, but then there were contacts where it was clarified on both sides that there had been a misunderstanding,” he added.

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 18:35

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656343631345725440

1656343631345725440

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Ukraine Headed Into a Dark and Scary Place - Daniel Davis

0vUkXMMFW2w

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 20:29

https://twitter.com/RussiaUSA/status/1656239551659282433

1656239551659282433

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1656363549311074304

1656363549311074304

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1656364294013874183

1656364294013874183

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1656375113145634817

1656375113145634817

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 20:36

https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/1656315747885547521

1656315747885547521

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 20:46

:ROFL::ROFL::silent:
https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656304144578232321

1656304144578232321

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656363705330794496

1656363705330794496

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 20:50

Russia Withdraws 1990 Treaty, Attacks 2 Ukr Bakhmut Buildings; Prigozhin Chaos; Cleverly Doubts

Kpg3cEbB61M

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 20:57

Text:

Ukraine is preparing up to nine mechanized brigades for a counteroffensive, Czech President Pavel said.

In total, this is 72 thousand people, 900 armored personnel carriers and 315 tanks.

Pavel added that there is no need to hurry with the counterattack, there is only one chance, so it is necessary to prepare as much as possible.

Join Slavyangrad chat. Your opinion matters.
https://t.me/+B6ixfOM5VkxhODQx

@Slavyangrad

Join SLG 🔺 Intelligence Briefings, Strategy and Analysis, Expert Community

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1656349364015747073

1656349364015747073

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 21:03

Text:

If West stops helping Ukraine, Kyiv to surrender in a few days, Josep Borrell

"I know how to end the war immediately: I stop providing military assistance to Ukraine, and Ukraine will surrender in a few days. That’s it; the war is over," he said.

At the same time, he added that although it will be peace, it will not be beneficial for the West. This statement once again proves that Ukraine is just a puppet in the hands of the "progressive powers", which is needed to resist Russia. - COC reports

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1656377075949875200

1656377075949875200

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Text:

Monument to the soldiers who died during the Special Military Operation was unveiled in Crimea.

The first monument in Crimea to those killed in a special military operation has been unveiled in the Simferopol district. The memorial immortalizes the names of 20 servicemen, natives of the peninsula

The monument includes two sculptures - of a pilot and an infantryman. The inscription on the plates reads: "Eternal glory and eternal memory to the SMO heroes who fell in battle".

#source

Join Slavyangrad chat. Your opinion matters.
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https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1656371613367955467

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Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 21:11

Text:

U.S. and British officials reneged on their solemn 1991-1992 assurances to Moscow that NATO would not move “one inch to the East” if Russia agreed to remove its 400,000 troops from East Germany and allow German reunification under NATO. Instead, NATO moved a thousand miles eastward, incorporating 14 former Soviet satellites, encircling Russia, and causing the Kremlin legitimate security fears.

Abelow: NATO continuously asserted its intention to incorporate Ukraine, despite Russia’s repeated warnings that it views Ukraine’s NATO entry as an existential threat and a “line that cannot be crossed.”

https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1656292965999083522

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Text:

In 2019, President Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, increasing Russian vulnerability to a U.S. first strike.

Abelow told me, “The provocations that the United States and its allies have directed at Russia are policy blunders so serious that, had the situation been reversed, U.S. leaders would long ago have risked nuclear war with Russia.” Abelow concludes that the U.S. government bears significant responsibility for the Ukrainian war. I agree.

The U.S. has escalated its belligerence throughout the war. As Chas Freeman, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, observed: “Everything we are doing, rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting.”

Col. Douglas Macgregor bitterly condemned the moral bankruptcy, the “shocking vacuum of humanity,” among the White House Neocon strategists who made common cause with Ukraine’s right wing ultranationalists (a polite description of the cohorts) to provoke the proxy war with Russia, sacrificing U.S. money and Ukrainian bodies: “They knew that Ukraine never had a chance to beat Russia any more than Mexico could beat the United States.” The administration’s stated purposes in Ukraine — exhausting the Russian military and deposing President Putin — were both longtime aspirations of the Neocon clique. “They wasted all these Ukrainian lives to gratify their vanities.” Just look at this succinct summary of the Neocon agenda published the year BEFORE the Ukraine war: https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/neocons-bent-on-starting-another-disaster-in-ukraine/

President Zelensky’s recent telephone appeal to China’s President Xi for help in settling the war with Russia suggests that Zelensky and his backers understand that their prospects of winning the war are minimal and quickly receding, something they cannot admit publicly without sounding defeatist. The call also suggests that President Zelensky has lost faith in the American government’s appetite for ending the conflict.

https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1656296471036329988

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Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 22:25

https://twitter.com/RussiaUSA/status/1656186523052826625

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https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/status/1656276760701403138

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Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 22:29

https://twitter.com/upholdreality/status/1656368000751075328

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Bill Ryan

10th May 2023, 22:29

https://twitter.com/RussiaUSA/status/1656186523052826625

1656186523052826625Thanks. Wonderful to watch, important key-moment history recorded on film. :muscle:

Ravenlocke

10th May 2023, 22:33

Yes I agree wholeheartedly!

Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 02:41

Text:

Advisor to Zelensky's Office was killed

Reportedly, Aleksey Titarenko, wad the chief adviser to the Directorate for Domestic and Humanitarian Policy.

Zelensky's Office says he "died on the front lines." However, according to other sources, Titarenko was destroyed during an artillery strike on the Chasov Yar area, where high-ranking officers and several politicians of the Kiev regime were located.

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1656224357461671936

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Mike Gorman

11th May 2023, 10:12

The music is just so melancholy, we have forgotten how bitter and devastating this war was for all Europeans, destruction of all that was beautiful and valued, so many killed, the resonance is still keenly felt today, it is so terrible they are fomenting more of this for the people of the world. I was born a mere 13 years after the end of WWII and I remember the air raid shelters and devastation around Liverpool/ Wirral area, just hits me sometimes the scale of this war. I am responding to that archival footage in Berlin in 1945.

Tintin

11th May 2023, 10:49

Love him or loathe him, you've I think got to admit that this little segment from yesterday's CNN Town Hall sees Donald Trump in sparkling form. "..in 24 hours" is probably stretching it but it's heartening to hear both RFK Jnr recently, and Donald Trump speaking sanely about what's going on here :flower:

Kaitlin Collins: “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”

Trump: “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.” [loud applause]

Source: https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1656512317859717121

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Pam

11th May 2023, 11:29

grapevine

11th May 2023, 11:51

grapevine

11th May 2023, 12:13

In about 1970 I would have been in high school in the US, probably my sophomore year was when I took the one required "American History" class, and I swear, I had no idea that the Russians defeated Hitler and the Third Reich. I'd like to see a copy of that (now 50 some year old) US History book, and see if it was my fault, maybe it was there but I glossed over it... or was it the US-centric omission of any facts not glorifying the US role in ending WWII (with weapons of mass destruction, I might add.) I know that at the time, I had no clue how big of a sacrifice in terms of lives lost - 26 to 27 million citizens - the war had been for Russia. Thanks, Russia. You got rid of most of the Nazis (other than the ones the US imported, in Operation Paperclip.)

Me too, American History, and I don't remember any Russian Participation. Really only knew of their participation until later and it wasn't from any state sponsored education. They may have been mentioned, but it was so insignificant that I have absolutely no memory of it at all. It would be interesting to know how they handle that today.

It's also a little known fact that China and the US were allies during WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#:~:text=According%20to%20Rummel%2C%20in%20China,the%20course%20of%20the%20war.

The estimated number of people killed by Japanese troops vary:

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, estimates that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly three to over ten million people, most likely six million Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos and Indochinese, among others, including European, American and Australian prisoners of war. According to Rummel, "This democide [i.e., death by government] was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[2] According to Rummel, in China alone, from 1937 to 1945, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and a total of 10.2 million Chinese were killed in the course of the war.
According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot, civilian deaths were between 10 million and 20 million. Some historians claim that up to 30 million people were killed, most of them civilians.

According to British historian Mark Felton:

The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning.

When you consider the humility of the Japanese people today, these numbers illustrate that in wartime all decency flies out the window, as was also the case in the horror stories that came out of Vietnam.

Mark (Star Mariner)

11th May 2023, 12:18

https://twitter.com/RussiaUSA/status/1656186523052826625

1656186523052826625Thanks. Wonderful to watch, important key-moment history recorded on film. :muscle:

Not taking any kind of position here, just throwing in a little extra context.

When the Red Army took Berlin in 1945, they did so perpetrating a swath of disgraceful crimes, including an estimated 2 million rapes of German women and girls - daughters, mothers, grandmothers, often in front of each other.

Mostly rear units were responsible for this (not merely grunts, but officers too). A few thousand were prosecuted for these warcrimes later, but many, many, many more escaped punishment. The uncountable victims received nothing.

Tintin

11th May 2023, 13:05

Britain has supplied Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles- official

LONDON, May 11 (Reuters) - Britain has supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, a Western official said on Thursday, which would allow its forces to hit Russian troops and logistics hubs deep behind the front line.

CNN first reported the decision, citing multiple senior Western officials. It said Britain had received assurances from the Ukrainian government that these missiles would be used only within Ukrainian sovereign territory and not inside Russia.

. . .

John Healy, Secretary of State for Defence, announced in Parliament a short while ago that UK was supplying Ukraine with Cruise missiles and that he hoped other UN countries would follow suit.

Suicidal :facepalm: More Pilgrim Society/Round Table skullduggery I shouldn't wonder.

Time to dig out those WW2 bomb shelters then....

Maniacs.

50868

Hamish

11th May 2023, 13:15

Hello,

Makes you wonder if the UK New Alert system was created as they expect things to get worse.

Tintin

11th May 2023, 13:24

Hello,

Makes you wonder if the UK New Alert system was created as they expect things to get worse.

I suspected that that was more to do with any virus seeding events, but yes, this could also be a factor. I think any comments made on the Russian side about 'responding appropriately' probably won't involve bombing us actually, but Russia bringing to the theatre something else that we haven't seen yet, and not necessarily a tactical nuke. We'll see in time of course.

s7e6e

11th May 2023, 13:25

Not taking any kind of position here, just throwing in a little extra context.

When the Red Army took Berlin in 1945, they did so perpetrating a swath of disgraceful crimes, including an estimated 2 million rapes of German women and girls - daughters, mothers, grandmothers, often in front of each other.

Mostly rear units were responsible for this (not merely grunts, but officers too). A few thousand were prosecuted for these warcrimes later, but many, many, many more escaped punishment. The uncountable victims received nothing.

True. To put it in perspective, victor Germans would take livestock or food from civilians but pay for these goods most of the time. Compared to the Russians, Germans were considered gentleman and many women ended up marrying German soldiers.

Pain, misery and rage can create monsters on all sides..

grapevine

11th May 2023, 13:41

Eva2

11th May 2023, 17:08

' May 10, 2023 #claytonmorris #redacted #redpilledtv
4 MINUTES AGO, Putin just sent a SHOCKING warning to NATO! with Clayton Morris
Clayton Morris joins us to discuss the Russia Ukraine War and how it affects the U.S. in this breaking news update.
Today the Department of Defense announced a new security assistance package to reaffirm the steadfast US support for Ukraine. Including to bolster its air defenses and sustain its artillery ammunition needs cuz it's out of ammo. This package, which totals up to 1.2 billion, is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and the EU president, Ursula Levon Lion today popped up, showed up on a, on a train to Ukraine to reaffirm the weapons and money to Ukraine.
They do all this to continue dictating and enforcing their will upon nations, their rules, which is essentialist system. Of pillage and suppression, they seem to have forgotten what the Nazis crazy claims for world supremacy brought to who enlisted this total evil and whose two to defend their home, their motherland and sacrifice their lives to defend, protect nations.
So there you go. That was Putin today and on this day.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHf8GJrA-g4

Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 20:22

Text:

Official announcement of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation:

1. The situation at the front is completely under control
2. No frontal penetrations
3. Attempts of enemy attacks on the Krasnoliman and Donetsk directions were repelled.
4. On Kherson in the direction of Zaporozhye, everything is ok.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1656753115184365568

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1656754024446586902

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1656754028062167040

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1656754033506283523

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ExomatrixTV

11th May 2023, 20:29

Trump Discussing Ukraine War on CNN: How To End It within 24 Hours!

xonH2aCS8MM

starts at 1:14 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xonH2aCS8MM&t=74s)

Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 20:30

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/status/1656751306613092382

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https://tass.com/politics/1616269?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_social_share

Malofeyev’s assets as ‘outright robbery’

According to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the US authorities have created a precedent for the confiscation of funds from objectionable foreign citizens, contrary to their own laws

MOSCOW, May 11. /TASS/. The seizure of the US assets of Konstantin Malofeyev, the founder of the Tsargrad television channel, is "outright robbery," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Thursday.

"This much is obvious to everybody who isn’t willing to obediently follow US guidelines: This is outright robbery that’s politically motivated. Through illegitimate machinations, the US is engaged in the confiscation of assets belonging to foreign citizens who fell out of its favor - contrary to the fundamental principles that guarantee the sanctity of private property," she said.

The diplomat said Washington doesn’t hide the fact that seizing Malofeyev’s assets won’t be the last such case and they intend to continue the "egregious practice of expropriating private assets.".

Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 20:44

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1656306366540021762

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1656628037264330752

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1656742272250118148

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Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 21:23

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656754032914886825

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656754039290228751

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656754044570857508

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Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 21:28

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1656741373255602176

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Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 21:42

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1656561311386415105

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https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1868967/?TSPD_101_R0=08765fb817ab200029df23aeb0951797ab6721adde0cac4b723c1dcc483bbfce0840eab6d1a5afe5087537b e43143000c68db1f308e4a78fffd7560bbdcda6ed4a91004e912c38bad4f85932fc38defc66aadaf0ef77b897430e93c8112 0d19c

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on the abduction of journalist Gonzalo Lira Lopez by Ukraine security services

On May 5, we learned that the Security Service of Ukraine detained Chilean journalist and producer Gonzalo Angel Quintilio Lira Lopez. His lot remains unknown at this point.

The Latin American video blogger had been commenting on the events in Ukraine from the epicenter. He explained in detail the sources of the crisis and covered the atrocities of the Nazis, which was not to their taste once again.

This is not his first disappearance. A little more than a year ago (on April 15, 2022) he stopped contacting other people. It turned out that he was being held by Ukrainian secret services who had seized his notebooks and deprived him of access to his accounts. Then they had to release him because of the broad media coverage of his disappearance.

The Security Service of Ukraine is holding him once again, and we urge the journalist community to defend our colleague and demand his immediate release.

In the year of the 50th anniversary of the fascist state coup in Chile, we need to prevent a very similar repetition of those events in Ukraine. The coup led to the forced disappearance of thousands of Chileans, including journalists. We hope for solidarity from the Chilean authorities that consider themselves Salvador Allende’s spiritual heirs.

Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 21:49

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1656775124631146500

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Ravenlocke

11th May 2023, 22:02

https://twitter.com/MayaSashenka/status/1656547113528950784

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ExomatrixTV

11th May 2023, 22:04

Britain Donating Long-range Missiles To Ukraine:

UPRYjTNrat4
Britain has announced it is donating long-range missiles to Ukraine for the first time since its war with Russia began. The UK Defence Secretary says it is offering Ukraine the best chance at defending itself as the military prepares for a long-awaited offensive. Russia is allegedly formulating an appropriate military response.

:facepalm:

Fellow Aspirant

12th May 2023, 03:32

And yet, there are many reliable reports that refute the claims by Russia's official sources. This includes the most recent, shocking setback for their troops around Bakhmut, where two units of the Russian army were wiped out by Ukrainian troops as the Russians tried to withdraw/retreat/run away, an action that left the flank of Wagner's front line vulnerable.

If this is not the beginning of large scale Ukrainian counter measures, (which it could very well be) it at least signals a major change in Russian positions, and not a good change for Wagner or Russian army forces. The Ukrainian push may be "battle ground shaping" only, setting up conditions for a later larger assault on a larger front.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/10/ukraine-says-russian-forces-pulling-back-after-bakhmut-attacks-a81088

Ukraine Says Russian Forces Pulling Back After Bakhmut Attacks

By AFP 10 May

A senior Ukrainian military official said Wednesday that Russian forces had dropped back from some areas near Bakhmut after limited counterattacks by Kyiv's forces in the longest-running battle of Moscow's invasion.
Commander of Ukrainian ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi said Russian troops had fallen back in some regions of the front in the eastern Donetsk region by up to two kilometers (around one mile).

"We are seeing the results of the effective actions of our units," Syrskyi said, explaining that his forces were launching counterattacks along some portions of the contact line around Bakhmut.

"In some areas of the front, the enemy could not withstand the onslaught of Ukrainian defenders and retreated to a distance of up to two kilometers," he added.

Russian troops have battled since last summer to capture Bakhmut, the political importance of which has come to surpass any strategic value.

But Wagner, the Russian paramilitary group leading the Kremlin's offensive for the city, has publicly complained to Moscow that it lacks resources to hold its positions.
Its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened this week to withdraw his forces from the city if the Defense Ministry did not bolster its supplies of ammunition.

At the same time, the Russian claim was ...

"Our defense forces are holding the front and preventing the enemy from advancing. The battle for Bakhmut is continuing," Syrskyi added in his statement on social media.

Bakhmut, which had a pre-war population of around 70,000 people, has been destroyed as Russian forces have posted incremental gains over recent months, amounting to some 80% of the city.

Reported 10 May by Al Jazeera

Ukrainian sources claimed their forces advanced 2.6km (1.6 miles) along a 3km-wide (1.9-mile) front, destroying the 6th and 8th companies of the 72nd Separate Motor Rifle Brigade.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the financier of the Wagner Group of mercenaries who have spearheaded the offensive in the city, appeared to confirm the Russian retreat. On May 9, he said a Russian unit abandoned its position near Bakhmut because of the “stupidity” of commanders.

“Today, everything is being done so that the front line crumbles. Today, one of the defence ministry’s units fled one of our flanks, abandoning their positions. Everyone fled,” said Prigozhin.

It was a rare setback for Russian forces, which on May 5 had advanced towards Khromove. Two days later they again advanced in an area 15km (9 miles) north of Bakhmut.

Russian forces mounted dozens of assaults in the city, and by Moscow’s account, advanced by a few city blocks. Ukrainian defenders are occupying a shrinking perch in the western suburbs.

Bakhmut is the bloodiest battle of the war for both sides. During the nine months it has lasted, it has cost Russia as many as 100,000 casualties, Ukraine’s eastern forces spokesman Serhiy Cherevaty estimated – half of its estimated overall losses.
Russia’s top generals appeared to waver in their determination to capture the city, worried about defending an 800km (497-mile) front against an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukraine said it has trained and equipped 12 mechanised battalions.

Prigozhin threatened to pull his forces out, complaining that the Russian defence ministry has starved his men of artillery shells, costing lives.

On May 5, Prigozhin recorded an open message to Russia’s defence chiefs that he was withdrawing his men from Bakhmut.
“On May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds. I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because, in the absence of ammunition, they’re doomed to perish senselessly,” Prigozhin said.

In a separate video, wherein he stood beside dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, Prigozhin unleashed expletives at the military leadership.
“His visible and visceral anger suggests that the Russian [defence ministry] has likely deprioritised Bakhmut and shifted operational focus elsewhere in the theatre in ways that may seriously compromise Wagner’s ability to operate effectively,” wrote the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Russian defence chief Sergei Shoigu told Colonel-General A Kuzmenkov, responsible for logistics, “to keep under special control the issues of continuous and rhythmic supply of troops in the areas of a special military operation with all the necessary weapons and military equipment”, said the defence ministry.

Another frequent Russian media poster is a man named Igor Girkin.
Igor Girkin’s recent post has been translated and posted online at

https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1655186960577703941/photo/1

For those who are unfamiliar with Mr Girkin’s credentials or his online contributions to the Russian Special Operation, here is some background:

Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin, also known by the alias Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, is a Russian army veteran and former Federal Security Service officer who played a key role in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and later the war in Donbas as an organizer of militant groups in the Donetsk People's Republic. Wikipedia
Born: December 17, 1970 (age 52 years), Moscow, Russia
Spouse: Miroslava Reginskaya (m. 2014)
Children: Ivan Girkin
TV shows: War In Ukraine
Organization founded: Angry Patriots Club
Parents: Vsevolod Girkin, Alla Girkina
Education: Historical and Archival Institute, Russian State University for the Humanities (1992)

Mr. Girkin’s post yesterday was translated and posted by Volodymyr Tretyak, (whose credentials are given below his translation/interpretation of Girkin’s post)

Mr. Tretyak writes …

“Igor Girkin is very pessimistic today. He says it is time to start thinking about preventing Russia from falling apart because military defeat is near. Regular readers and listeners should remember the assessment of the situation that I laid out (and expressed) last winter. One of the theses was: "If the necessary national measures for the successful conduct of the war are not taken before May, we will not be able to win this war.

I state: NO MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN. Neither organizational nor personnel. The goals of the war have not been determined, and the inhabitants of the Planet of the Pink Ponies(PRP) have not understood that "this war will be fought until one side is victorious. Accordingly, since there is no goal, there is no strategy. No strategy - no conscious work on its implementation. But the enemy has a strategy from the beginning and is being implemented with all its might. More and more successfully since the Kremlin is "playing giveaway" with an inexplicable enthusiasm and childlike confidence in the ultimate "contract" that is comfortable for the elderly Ponies, Elephants, and Unicorns.

Now we have to think about how to preserve the state, the country and the people in a situation of impending military defeat. And, yes - even for a "worthy non-fatal defeat" (in which our enemies will be forced to abandon their plans for the complete fragmentation of Russia and the elimination of its sovereignty) we will have to fight long and hard. Harder and longer than it would have been if we had fought to win decisively from the outset.

And the longer the occupants of the PRP will linger in the "sweet languor" of confidence in their peaceful and happy old age (which has long come for most of the VIPs) - the less chance that in the end the Russian ship will manage to get out of the military storm and systemic crisis, without sinking (after a long and bloody Troubles) into History.”

As translated by Volodymyr Tretyak
Source:
https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1655186960577703941/photo/1
https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1655186960577703941?cxt=HHwWisC94azxs_gtAAAA

About the translator and operator of the Twitter account:
@VolodyaTretyak
Different info/thoughts related to the Russo-Ukrainian War | founder of
@slovo2023
language school | author at
@wartranslated
| #NAFO
Science & TechnologyViennalinktr.ee/volodymyrtrety…Joined January 2019

Brian

ExomatrixTV

12th May 2023, 13:21

zz0bOce8pnE

Bill Ryan

12th May 2023, 13:56

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/05/10/ukraine-says-russian-forces-pulling-back-after-bakhmut-attacks-a81088

Ukraine Says Russian Forces Pulling Back After Bakhmut AttacksWell, they were wrong. :) Ukraine 'says' a lot. You should know that by now. The real story is here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrs0Q5y5bsg).

You gotta pay attention to what's actually happening in the world. Are you listening to Brian Berletic, Alexander Mercouris, Scott Ritter or Col Douglas Macgregor?

No, I thought not. :ROFL: You're still reading the Daily Beast and watching CBC. A good way to stay unaware, sincerely believing all your opinions about this situation are your own.

https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak

Take a good look at all his twitter threads. He's Ukrainian, of course, but located in Vienna. (We don't know his circumstances — maybe he's married to an Austrian — but his distance from the front line, given that he's of military age, might tell us something.)

We can link you to any number of desperately-hopeful, false-news-sharing, Ukrainian social media propagandists. But that's all they are.

:focus:

This thread is for sharing and reporting actual Ukraine-and-Russia related news and opinions which are accurate and which matter.

Bill Ryan

12th May 2023, 17:52

Alexander Mercouris explains in a 15 minute video that the US was [wisely!] reluctant to provide long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, so simply got the UK to do the near-equivalent on their behalf, sending long-range Storm Shadow missiles themselves.

He castigates the UK for being (a) so obedient and complicit, and (b) so simply stupid for a whole long list of reasons.

It won't make any difference to the conflict. Storm Shadow missiles are air-launched, so the Russians will happily just destroy a bunch more aircraft — wherever, whatever or whosever they are.

UK escalation: Storm Shadow long-range missiles to Ukraine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHfwaY4tKow&t=323s

Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 18:11

https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1657064338782289934

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https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1657065472825622541

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https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1657067410296274960

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https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1657072409071976453

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 18:32

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657086576671744010

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Text:

The Belgian government is allocating a new €92 million assistance package to Ukraine, the funds will be taken from confiscated Russian assets, the press service of the Belgian government reports.

Half of this package will be used for military assistance, the remaining €46 million will go to humanitarian aid and strengthening the diplomatic presence of Belgium.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657086201679998976

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657084117643673605

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 18:39

https://twitter.com/Tracking_Power/status/1657028606491590657

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https://www.mintpressnews.com/independent-ukraine-kill-list-actually-run-by-kiev-backed-by-washington/284639/#.ZF5LQVuJN8g.twitter

“Independent” Ukrainian “Kill List” Actually Run By Kiev, Backed by Washington

Late last year, my name was added to a blacklist published online by the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation. I joined over ninety others deemed to be “speakers who promote narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.“

These included Manuel Pineda and Clare Daly, both leftist Members of the European Parliament (MEP); Also counted are people on the right, such as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, neocon and former IDF officer Edward Luttwak, a slew of rightist MEPs; Ex CIA officer, Ray McGovern; former military and intelligence figures such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor, as well as academics such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs. Journalists on the list included Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson and Eva Bartlett, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, and even actor Steven Seagal.

What was my crime? It said my “pro-Russian narrative” was claiming that “NATO’s proxy war with Russia is taking place in Ukraine”. Of course, a NATO proxy war is exactly what is happening there, as this article will only further confirm.

The listing helpfully provided a link with the evidence, an article I wrote for Mayadeen English called “How disinformation works: Western intelligence agencies global war on the left.” It contained a single, 176-word paragraph on Ukraine titled “‘Russian Disinformation’ or Ukrainian lies?” It recounted several examples of Ukrainian misinformation and concluded that “Anyone who mentions any particular truth is derided for echoing Putin’s ‘talking points’.” In the event I was actually denounced as an “information terrorist” who might be guilty of “war crimes.”[COLOR="red"]

Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:03

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657084119824605184

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657081067491192832

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:15

Text:

Not every Ukrainian assault was successful yesterday, this one ended in complete failure after DPR drones monitored Ukrainian army movements. DPR artillery began striking their positions, the KIA/wounded Ukrainian soldiers were then abandoned by the ones who retreated.

DPR news reports continue to update on the frontlines

https://twitter.com/LogKa11/status/1657094748232900623

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1657098495809970193

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https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657086933019811846

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https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657085898318569482

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:18

https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657084129924505614

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https://declassifieduk.org/britains-42-coups-since-1945/

Britain’s 42 coups since 1945

The UK has planned or executed over 40 attempts to remove foreign governments in 27 countries since the end of the Second World War, involving the intelligence agencies, covert and overt military interventions and assassinations, Declassified has found.

MI6 arranged the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba in 1961. (Photo: Bettmann via Getty)
Probably the most well-known coup staged by British intelligence since 1945 was the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected government in 1953 – an operation planned with the CIA. But the UK has been involved in at least 41 other attempts to overthrow governments since the end of the Second World War.

These have ranged from intelligence-led to military-led operations, both overt and covert, with some being successful from Whitehall’s standpoint, while many have failed to achieve their objectives.

Many remain little known, while others are shrouded in secrecy, with only a few details having emerged.

The year 1953 was in fact a busy one for Whitehall planners since, as well as removing Mohammed Mossadeq in Iran, they sent a gunboat to overthrow the democratically-elected government in British Guiana, led by the popular nationalist Cheddi Jagan.

At the same time, they were promoting anti-government propaganda operations in another Latin American state, Guatemala. That British campaign prepared the ground for the 1954 CIA-engineered overthrow of another nationalist, and elected government, under Jacobo Arbenz.

As if this wasn’t enough, UK covert operatives were also busy at the time planning the removal and assassination of Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser, in various schemes after Nasser took power in a 1952 nationalist revolution.

Nasser’s assumption to power challenged Britain’s position in the Middle East and the stability of the repressive, conservative monarchies – many of them near-medieval in nature – that Whitehall, then and now, was propping up, especially in the Gulf region.

Indeed, it was such nationalist forces that were the UK’s main enemies in the so-called ‘third world’ after 1945, even as mainstream journalists and academics endlessly wrote about the Soviet threat and the Cold War.

Relentless planning

In the 1950s, British regime change planning was relentless, with further known operations drawn up to promote uprisings against nationalist governments in Syria in 1956 and in 1957, neither of which were fully implemented.

One plan that was put into effect, however, was the covert war instigated with the US in Indonesia - intended to stimulate an uprising against President Sukarno, beginning in the country’s myriad outer islands. It remains one of the UK’s least known covert operations, and eventually failed.

Sukarno was overthrown a decade later, however, in one of the 20th century’s worst bloodbaths, enacted by the Indonesian military under General Suharto. The declassified files show the UK backed the 1965/66 slaughters of communists, leftists and ordinary villagers, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The UK conducted media operations to counter Sukarno and delivered covert messages to the Generals assuring them of the UK’s acquiescence in their takeover. Suharto ruled Indonesia, often resorting to sheer brutality, for three decades.

Ruling the world?

Throughout the 1960s there was little let-up in Whitehall officials’ belief they could put in power whoever they wanted, at least in certain countries.

In 1961, evidence suggests that they had a hand in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically-elected leader who was subject to a vicious MI6 and CIA campaign to overthrow him before he was captured and tortured.

Media operations by the Foreign Office’s notorious Information Research Department - a propaganda unit set up in 1948 - also helped overthrow Brazil’s João Goulart in 1964. His programme of ambitious land reform and extending the vote to Brazil’s illiterate population incensed the country’s political, military, and business elite - and the CIA which eventually helped remove him.

By now, Britain was making sure that Cheddi Jagan - who had made a comeback after being removed ten years earlier - could not consolidate his power in British Guiana, as officials rigged the system in a constitutional coup to ensure he could not be elected again.

The mid-1960s was also an era of palace coups in the UK’s client states in the Gulf region.

In 1964, British military officers based in Saudi Arabia, who were advising the Saudi National Guard, helped Prince Faisal remove his older brother, King Saud. The following year, the British sponsored the removal of the ruler of the emirate of Sharjah - Saqr bin Sultan al-Qasimi - in favour of another - Khalid bin Mohammed Al Kasimi.

Then in the following year, they conducted a similar exercise in another emirate, Abu Dhabi, again replacing its ruler with his brother - Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan, the father of the current president of the United Arab Emirates.

In 1970 came a coup in another closely-controlled British puppet state - Oman - that was organised by British officers. It put in power Sultan Qaboos, who ruled with an iron fist for a further 50 years until his death in 2020.

Assassinating Gaddafi - and a few others

Almost as soon as Muammar Gaddafi seized power in a military coup in Libya in 1969, nationalising British oil operations, Britain tried to remove him. First came a planned uprising and coup in 1970-71, which was not, however, carried out.

Over a decade later, the UK offered its air bases to US warplanes conducting airstrikes on Tripoli, Libya’s capital, that targeted Gaddafi’s compound, killing a few dozen people but not him.

Britain tried again 10 years later, in 1996, when MI6 secretly funded Islamist militants to assassinate Gaddafi in the city of Sirte, an operation that again killed bystanders but not the Libyan ruler.

In 2011, Britain got him, launching a major air campaign and covert support to Islamist militants on the ground to finally overthrow the regime, with Gaddafi being killed in October of that year.

However, it wasn’t only Gaddafi, Nasser and Lumumba who are believed to have been targeted for assassination, according to evidence that has emerged. Former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson alleged that MI6 drew up plans to kill Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 1992.

Then there is Uganda. In 1969, it has been contended that the UK planned the assassination of President Milton Obote - who Britain confronted because of his nationalist economic policies and his opposition to apartheid South Africa.

In the mid-1970s, prime minister Harold Wilson proposed assassinating the murderous Idi Amin, Obote’s successor. By the late 1970s, foreign secretary David Owen said that he also proposed assassinating Amin, who eventually lived out his days in exile in Saudi Arabia.

Tintin

12th May 2023, 19:35

Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:48

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1657092663814807577

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Hrs0Q5y5bsg

Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:54

https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1657069447805272098

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 19:58

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657111089685880833

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:03

Text:
Here a very good summary of the day without gloating or dooming - for sure again with the uncertainty of ongoing events and the limitation of available information:

Kiev framed Washington - the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked Lugansk with American long-range decoy missiles, which had not previously appeared in the supply lists

Judging by the footage coming from the center of Luhansk, the city was attacked by American ADM-160B missiles. This is a decoy missile launched from an aircraft and designed to detect and overload air defenses. So the version about the first use of the British Storm Shadow turned out to be untenable.

Perhaps the Ukrainians were somehow able to place some explosives in American missiles, or they hoped that the detonation of the remaining fuel would cause enough damage.

But the most important thing is that the deliveries of these missiles were not announced earlier, moreover, the United States in every possible way denied the supply of long-range weapons to Ukraine. In principle, American statements are worthless, because the same HIMARS were included in official reports far from immediately after their appearance in the SMO zone. On the other hand, the Americans may have decided to be cunning, and since this missile is classified as a decoy, it is allegedly not considered a weapon.

Let the damage from them be comparable to what can be done by artisanal kamikaze drones, which we have previously encountered. However, the problem is that the Armed Forces of Ukraine can also use them for their intended purpose - to complicate the work of our air defense.

In any case, we now need to proceed from the premise that the enemy now has similar ammunition. The destruction of the remnants of the Ukrainian Air Force should be one of the key priorities for our army. There are no planes, and there are no launches

Join Slavyangrad chat. Your opinion matters.
https://t.me/+B6ixfOM5VkxhODQx

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1657087391637594132

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Text:

Blitzkrieg in the Soledar tactical area did not work for Kiev, despite the fact that significant forces (up to 1,000 fighters and up to 40 tanks) were thrown into the battle, they acted with considerable persistence - the Russian MoD reports 26 attacks on the 95 km front. The enemy was not able to break through our defence, and their attacks were repulsed. The enemy failed to achieve serious success in other parts of the Artemovsky front as well.

It is clear that information is contradictory, and the situation is in flux, but Syrsky himself actually confirmed the fact that the first onslaught of the Nazis did not reach their goal. He stated that the task of the AFU was to push the Russian troops away from the "road of life". That is, since they had failed to break through our defenses (rather than displace our troops in some areas), Syrsky immediately lowered the bar in order to pass off failure as a "victory". And it worked. "We have heard the report of General Syrsky, whose units have stopped the enemy with super effort and even threw him back in some directions," Zelensky announced during the one of his meetings.

However, the goal stated by Syrsky, makes little sense, because even if the positions of our troops are moved away from the road, it will still remain under the fire of our artillery and air force, and will still be the same "Road of Death", as the AFU soldiers nicknamed it, losing a third of fighters and equipment when they move along it. It should be noted that our troops did not cut this throat, turning it into a kind of "shooting gallery". And even if the Ucranians pushed back some of our units from the road, it did not in any way ease their situation.
.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian sources report: "In reality, the Office of the President threw new AFU reserves into the meat grinder, gaining situational success in a 300-metre stretch. But the price of such actions is hundreds of lives of good soldiers and equipment. Zelensky dreams of launching an offensive from Bakhmut, where in fact the AFU had already been defeated, but by "heroically" turning the tide, the AFU went on the offensive. This is a beautiful scenario, which the officeholders invented for themselves and began to implement in pursuit of political goals.

This plan was considered by them to be achievable, because they managed to convince the bankers of the reality of the conflict between the Wagner PMC and the Russian Defense Ministry, and that one or the other is ready to withdraw from their positions. Of course, the Nazis draw information not only from TG-channels, and serious operational work was done to make them believe it. And as we can see, it has been successful. The Bakhmut meat grinder continues its work. And this is, undoubtedly, a victory for the Wagner PMCs, the MoD and special services.

#source

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https://t.me/+B6ixfOM5VkxhODQx

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1657088112772669443

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:12

https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1656831652050640896

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https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1657033675689656330

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:15

https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1657111544465969171

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:27

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1657079312342736905

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:30

Text:

Ambassador Andrei #Kelin on UK supply of #StormShadow missiles to #Kiev:

▪It is a big escalation of the conflict.
▪We perfectly understand this has been done deliberately to make Kiev able to reach Russian towns and villages, incl in Crimea.
▪#UK is playing a leading role in the prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict & making it more bloody.
▪It is entirely UK’s responsibility for further escalation.

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1657112886605389825

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 20:35

https://twitter.com/MayaSashenka/status/1656547113528950784

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1657037362847793152

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 21:05

https://twitter.com/MayaSashenka/status/1656937316420579331

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https://twitter.com/MayaSashenka/status/1656745466405462017

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 21:09

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657125342232887296

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Ravenlocke

12th May 2023, 21:16

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657130906983751680

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657125145851330565

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 04:04

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1657053033518477318

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Fellow Aspirant

13th May 2023, 08:23

Why hello there, Bill. I didn't expect a response from your own self! Last I read you had consigned my sorry butt to the tender mercies of your resident pet troll, the Russian tornado of anger and invective. Nice to have your personal attention again, my friend. :sun:

Putting aside your tone of derision and condescension, (Your use of the rolling, laughing emoticon is really beneath you, Bill. It's more in keeping with a smirking high school bully, and is especially revealing when sat beside a personal confession like "I thought not".) It's no wonder that you no longer have members that offer opposing views - any that might wish to post such ideas self censure, not wanting to be attacked as heretics. Your scathing ridicule is blunt but effective.

I note that rather than debate the legitimacy of facts or engage with opinions, your criticisms deflect thought and tend to align with those of the Chinese state, when it lashes out at perceived slights or actions by nation states that have come afoul of the Party's plan for global domination. That is the same formula that the Communists have been following since the Long March: advise the offender that s/he is thinking incorrectly, and to immediately correct their thinking by imposing a program of re-education. By that, they mean of course, to made to fall into step with the ideology of the party before negative effects make themselves known. Once the offending country is thinking correctly, it will see the light and agree with the Party. Just as Orwell's Great Leader eventually broke poor Winston's mind and he fell completely in love with the regime that pursued a vision where a hob-nailed boot would be stomping on the face of humanity, forever.

Not a pretty image, for sure.

However, I am unrepentant, so far, anyway, and shall refuse to be indoctrinated into the particular Russian propaganda that has taken over your world view. Yes, I'm acquainted with the sources you recommend for education, despite your insulting depictions of my impoverished mind. I find that some of the sources you mention are pretty "on the mark" with some of their analysis, and some are hopelessly lost down the rabbit hole of one organized conspiracy plot or another. Some, like A. Jones, have slid into the Qanon miasma. Some have a past of legitimate commentary, and some hold views that partially line up with my own. They are all, however, amateurs at what they do, most having become "political analysts" or "citizen journalists" later in life, when they have exhausted more than a few options at odd jobs or small business start-ups. They have attained audiences online, though, and are fluent enough and smooth enough that they are able to weave suspicion and skepticism into conspiracies that capture a lot of minds. Writing from afar, they claim to understand the truth about the war, even though they have never visited a Ukraine struggling valiantly to survive. At least the Ukrainian "propagandists" are living their truth. As such, they deserve more respect than any of the media pundits who you are happy to see as experts, and who only fill that description on the basis of their own say-so.

I had thought that you would find no quibble with the videos of Russian dissenters who were speaking their thoughts on video and had been translated. It appears I was wrong in expecting that. Even their own words condemning the failing Russian war effort are, in your thinking, illegitimate. Why? Because I used them on your forum? Is it impossible for you to brook any dissent? Is that why you will not engage with the merits of the opposing views - because there really isn't an opposing side worthy of consideration, owing to your truth that everything that you don't believe is lies? What good is having a super power like "discernment" if it's not exercised? How do you expect to ever become aware if you consume only cherries picked from the same tree?

As far as content theme goes for your "experts", they all share a steadfast, core belief in some version of the Anglo-Saxon Mission, just as you do. The resultant anti-Western bias has lead all of you down a branch of reality that rarely overlaps onto mine. You and your followers on Project Avalon and all of the sources that you follow were ripe for Putin's pickin', and you are now in his basket.

Far from displaying any of your vaunted "discernment", you have been able to turn virtually any fact or event into "proof" of Putin's genius or his enemies' perfidy. Your structured echo chamber of "trustworthy" sources that reinforce one another with their own consistent premises, acting as a filter that prevents you from glimpsing even a glimmer of the light of truth.

And it's not your fault, really. Your predilections toward distrusting Western machinations were the perfect set-up for Putin's vast machine of thought influence. Just look at any of Masha's posts and see how she pounds on the necessity of proper thought. Not researching facts for the truth, but on throwing over all of your preconceptions about your country and world. Sounds like sage advice, except that she only offers Putin's thinking as a substitute. The more guilty she makes you feel, the more likely you are to adopt her ideas. Old stuff.

Many years ago, Carol Clark informed me that you and I could both learn from one another. I didn’t think that I had a role to play in helping you (and probably still don’t, but I must give it a shot). But then I watched in disbelief how, over the course of just a few years, you discovered one Donald J. Trump and threw your influence over into his camp, getting deeper and deeper into what is now a verifiable cult. You were so utterly convinced that he was going to be the saviour of humanity that I didn’t say anything.

However, your support for the Putin regime has taken you into even darker waters. To be blind to policies that involve poisoning one’s enemies, shooting them on the street in cold blood, having dissenters thrown from high windows, taking away the human rights of gays and transgenders, imprisoning citizens for 15 years for using the word “war” to refer to his “Special Military Operation”, reassuring the world for two years that he “had no intention” of invading Ukraine – up to 24 hours before he unleashed his forces to do just that … the list of autocratic fascism is lengthy and bloody. And that doesn’t even go into the war crimes and crimes against humanity that he has been charged with, including international child smuggling. I see no possibility of misunderstanding Putin’s behaviour as being anything but pure evil. Why do you continue to stand in this monster's camp?

May you one day come to an understanding about the truth of the devastation in Ukraine, including the reason for it. It requires nothing so subtle as discernment.

My words and my opinions are just as accurate as any found anywhere else on this forum. Your failure to recognize this demonstrates amply that this is not a place open for the discussion of opposing ideas and opinions. It is a closed club whose members must adhere to delimited premises and beliefs. Failure to do so begs personal attacks on intelligence, insults, derision and disrespect, as I have found.

Such a disappointment, Bill.

Namaste,

Brian

grapevine

13th May 2023, 08:56

Douglas Macgregor - The Last Stage: Preparing for the Great Offensive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7CqVTnQFW0&ab_channel=DouglasMacgregorCol
Latest insightful opinion by Douglas Macgregor.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze

13th May 2023, 09:44

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0I9TWBdf2KHWhZGpu01Vu5mzvD0Age3/view?usp=sharing

CRITICAL THINKING

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cum3k-Wglfw

Tintin

13th May 2023, 11:54

To many of us here, as already shared on the thread before, the existence of this list is very well known. Eva Bartlett and Scott Ritter have already shared their experiences in writing. Now David Miller provides his informed view, and research results.

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"Of course, the defamatory attacks encourage an atmosphere where social media threats can be made. But the issue of Nazism in Ukraine will be seen in retrospect as a defining issue of our era and it is important to remember that the reason I and many others are threatened by the Ukraine government and their NATO backers is because we in turn threaten to expose them for what they are: Nazi collaborators." - David Miller

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“INDEPENDENT” UKRAINIAN “KILL LIST” ACTUALLY RUN BY KIEV, BACKED BY WASHINGTON

Source: MintPress News (https://www.mintpressnews.com/independent-ukraine-kill-list-actually-run-by-kiev-backed-by-washington/284639/)
Publication date: May 12th, 2023

Late last year, my name was added to a blacklist published online (https://web.archive.org/web/20221004031714/https://cpd.gov.ua/reports/spikery-yaki-prosuvayut-spivzvuchni-rosijskij-propagandi-naratyvy%EF%BF%BC/) by the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation. I joined over ninety others deemed to be “speakers who promote narratives consonant with Russian propaganda.“

These included Manuel Pineda and Clare Daly, both leftist Members of the European Parliament (MEP); Also counted are people on the right, such as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, neocon and former IDF officer Edward Luttwak, a slew of rightist MEPs; Ex CIA officer, Ray McGovern; former military and intelligence figures such as Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor, as well as academics such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs. Journalists on the list included Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson and Eva Bartlett, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, and even actor Steven Seagal.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/rrq-e1683893620565-768x510.png
Девід Міллер, Журналіст = David Miller, Journalist – in Ukrainian

What was my crime? It said my “pro-Russian narrative” was claiming that “NATO’s proxy war with Russia is taking place in Ukraine”. Of course, a NATO proxy war is exactly what is happening there, as this article will only further confirm.

The listing helpfully provided a link with the evidence, an article (https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/how-disinformation-works:western-intelligence-agencies-global-war-on-the-left) I wrote for Mayadeen English called “How disinformation works: Western intelligence agencies global war on the left.” It contained a single, 176-word paragraph on Ukraine titled “‘Russian Disinformation’ or Ukrainian lies?” It recounted several examples of Ukrainian misinformation and concluded that “Anyone who mentions any particular truth is derided for echoing Putin’s ‘talking points’.” In the event I was actually denounced (https://www.newsweek.com/meet-democrat-siding-putin-ukraine-war-1736517) (Ed. Newsweek article) as an “information terrorist” who might be guilty of “war crimes.”

Being added to the blacklist concentrates the mind wonderfully on the forces ranged against the possibility of truth and justice in the crisis-ridden West. When I was first accused, over a decade ago now, of antisemitism, my response was to intensify my research and writing activities on the organizations involved in defaming me. Since then I have produced a long catalog of work on the Zionist movement as well as on Western propaganda activities. Of course, the defamatory attacks encourage an atmosphere where social media threats can be made. But the issue of Nazism in Ukraine will be seen in retrospect as a defining issue of our era and it is important to remember that the reason I and many others are threatened by the Ukraine government and their NATO backers is because we in turn threaten to expose them for what they are: Nazi collaborators.

THE NATO-BACKED KILL LIST

But what is the Center for Countering Disinformation? It is an official governmental body (https://cpd.gov.ua/) created in late March 2021, along with a similar organization, the Center for Strategic Communication (https://spravdi.gov.ua/en/about-us/?__cf_chl_tk=q8X5Bi4KALpR.5u47zeemm_oK3J4NicpYA8j0uCjja4-1683040462-0-gaNycGzNDXs), by President Zelensky himself. But are they related to other blacklisting websites like Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”), widely seen (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/ukraine-publishes-list-of-undesirables-accused-of-supporting-the-russian-invasion) as a “kill list”? Peeling back the layers of cover and deception enables us to trace the origins of the kill list, which is still being hosted in Ukraine.

As it turns out, the covert “kill list” website is a product of the Ukraine regime, effectively funded by the CIA (amongst others) and is hosted by NATO. One extraordinary thing is that many American citizens, including ex-military and intelligence operatives, are included, as well as a significant number of citizens of NATO member countries. Perhaps the most remarkable element is that NATO has hosted the site (and a collection of affiliated websites) on its servers in Brussels. At the same time as NATO think tank the Atlantic Council boasts (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/board-of-directors/) that Henry Kissinger is on its Board of Directors, NATO also hosts a kill list website on which Kissinger appears.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/adgdsg.png

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look.

Let’s start with the kill list website itself, Myrotvorets. Today it is located at Myrotvorets.center, but it was originally at psb4ukr.org. That domain was first registered (https://www.whoxy.com/psb4ukr.org) on 14 August 2014, some six months after the U.S.-backed Maidan coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych. Other similar domain names were later logged for the group, including the following (date of first registration in brackets):

• Psb-news.org (3 April 2015)
• Psb4ukr.ninja (19 April 2015)
• Psb4ukr.net (7 May 2015)
• Psbr4ukr.xyz (8 November 2015)
• Report2psb.online (19 August 2017)

These were used either as mirror sites, as digest news from the site, or, in the case of the last one, a form for reporting suspects (https://report2psb.online/). The Myrotvorets.center domain name was first registered on 7 November 2015 and the site was live by February 2016.

Three people are associated with these domains and they provide valuable clues to who and what was involved in the kill list site. They are:

• Victor/Viktor Garbar is a longstanding Maidan activist and co-ordinator of the Maidan Monitoring Information Center. He was the first registrant of a Myrotvorets domain name in August 2014 – psb4ukr.org. He had previously owned the domain of Maidan Monitoring from 2001 – maidanua.org (now located at maidan.org.ua). The group has been in existence since before the so called “Orange Revolution” in 2004. It was, of course, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy the foundation known as the “CIA sidekick” and the International Renaissance Fund, the Ukraine branch of the Open Society Foundation run by George Soros.

• Vladimir/Volodymyr Kolesnikov is a webmaster and developer. He has never given any public indication that he is affiliated with Myrotvorets. Among the links to the kill list are that a domain he owns (free-sevastopol.com) now redirects to Myrotvorets.center and he registered psb-news.org which is devoted to Myrotvorets news.

• Oksana/Oxana Tinko was the first to register the domain Myrotvorets.center and she also registered several others related to the kill list project such as Psb4ukr.ninja, Psb4ukr.net and Psbr4ukr.xyz

OPERATION BUTTERFLY – THE PROTOTYPE KILL LIST

Tinko is also the registrant of a series of domains that appear to be components of the Myrotvorets project and one that appears to have been a prototype. It is particularly stark in its intention to use the website to kill traitors or “terrorists”. The domain Metelyk.org was first claimed on 21 July 2014, three weeks before the first Myrotvorets domain. Metelyk is the Ukrainian word for Butterfly. The website titled Operation Butterfly was online by late August 2014, the first holdings in the Internet Archive are from the 27th of that month.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/wr-768x145.png
Operation "Butterfly" website

Website FAQs make it clear that it considers calling “for separatism or changes in the constitutional system” a crime. The site states the necessity “to take appropriate measures in the event that the court, the police, the SBU, or the prosecutor’s office is trying to release terrorists and their accomplices from the arms of the law”. The FAQs are even more explicit on what is meant by “appropriate measures.”

Q: Last question: why “Butterfly”?

A: The site’s logo features a butterfly known as the “deadhead hawk”. In Latin, it has the name Acherontia atropos, where the first word comes from the name of the river in the realm of the dead in ancient Greek mythology, and the second is the name of the goddess of fate, who cuts the thread of human life. This symbolism should remind the enemies of Ukraine that their fate currently hangs on a very thin thread, and we will do everything to break this thread.

In late 2014 another associated site – Operativ.info – was in action calling for information about saboteurs and terrorists and threatening that if disinformation was detected, they would “regard these actions as assistance to terrorists and take measures against disinformers”. Revealingly the Operativ.info site was labeled as a project of InformNapalm at this stage.

Myrotvorets lists thousands of “saboteurs”, “separatists”, “terrorists” and “traitors”. Sometimes, it has crossed out their photographs once they had been killed, with the label “liquidated”. This, for instance, happened after the murder of Daria Dugina in Moscow in August 2022. Today the Myrotvorets site houses links to two other domains which appear to be integral parts of the operation. One – ordilo.org – is titled “STORAGE OF INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMES AGAINST UKRAINE”. The other – identigraf.center – allows various categories of users to submit images of individuals for facial recognition scanning. Tinko registered both domains.

THE NATO CONNECTION

Kolesnikov and Tinko were successive registrants on Natocdn.work (from March 11, 2015). Tinko registered a follow on domain Natocdn.net (28 January 2019). These obscure-sounding web addresses were used to host the files needed for the Myrotvorets site as can be seen by examining the “page source”(right-click in Chrome and select “View page source”) on the site including in versions held in the Internet Archive. The first domain name (.work) was previously used to host both the original and succeeding Myrotvorets web sites. Thus it is in the page source on psb4ukr.org on 15 December 2015 just before the launch of the myrotvorets.center website, and is in the latter page source when it was first captured in the internet archive on 25 February 2016. The archive also shows that the latter domain was later hosted via Natocdn.net.

The letters CDN perhaps refer to a Content Delivery Network, a device to speed up the delivery of web pages when they are searched from an otherwise remote location, such as the California based name servers also used by the site. In fact, the Natocdn.net domain is hosted at none other than the official website NATO.int, based at its headquarters in Brussels.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/asff.png

Source (https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/ukrainian-web-resorces-hosted-by-nato.67645/) - Ukrainian WEB resorces hosted by NATO

Back on 17 April 2015, several interested people had also tracked the original web address (psb4ukr.org) directly to nato.int without the intermediary “CDN” domain suggesting that Myrotvorets had been hosted there from near the beginning. Other IP history records show that the Operation Butterfly domain discussed above was also hosted on psb4ukr.nato.int, as were two other sites:

• zoperativ.info which we noted above was part of the Myrotvorets operation;
• informnapalm.org

The latter was described “as anti-Russian propaganda site.” While this is certainly true, that designation seriously underestimates the importance of that domain in this story, as we shall see.

A day or so after this exposure in April 2015, Oxsana Tinko registered a new site for the project: psb4ukr.ninja. Perhaps foolishly, perhaps in an attempt to lean into the disclosure, she gave her location as Estonia and her company as NATO CCDCOE – the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence. For added authenticity, she used the correct street address and phone number.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/assa-768x186.png

The NATO center quickly put out a statement denying any link, reading:

n fact, the Centre of Excellence has absolutely no connection with the site mentioned… Oxana Tinko … has no affiliation whatsoever with the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence… [She] appear[s] to have hijacked the Centre’s public information and we are taking steps to get the false information removed

It is also noteworthy, however, that a Ukraine Ministry of Defense psyops Powerpoint from 2015, leaked in the same month of that year (April), refers to the NATO cyber center as one of seven Western groups with which it had “cooperation”.

Nevertheless, the link to the NATO servers remained in the page source of the Myrotvorets websites. It was not until the NATO connection became an issue again in late August 2022 that anything was done about this. This was after Henry Kissinger had been added to the site in May. Then on August 24, independent journalist Eva Bartlett (who was named on both the Myrotvorets and Center for Countering Disinformation lists) reported that the page source code for Myrotvorets included links to resources held at psb4ukr.natocdn.net. Later, on October 14, she drew attention to the fact that Elon Musk had been listed on the site briefly after he threatened not to continue supplying his Starlink system to the Ukraine military for free. Musk responded “Is this list real?” Within eight days the page source links to natocdn.net were gone.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/assfa.png

More than one hundred links to natocdn.net were still there on October 21, 2022 at 22:35 but were all gone by the next morning at 09:14. Even after the incriminating text was removed, however, IP tracking sites show the domain natocdn.net is still, at the time of writing (Archive version (https://archive.ph/FLrxL)), mounted on servers at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In fact, many of the image files used to make up the site are still hosted at that URL including the gory front page collage of alleged dead Russian soldiers. (Archive version (https://psb4ukr.natocdn.net/2022/05/sm-2048x1365.jpg)) (Ed. Warning graphic)

But what of Informnapalm.org – the other site which appears to have been hosted on nato.int? The evidence suggests that Myrotvorets is a project of InformNapalm.

INFORMNAPALM AS A UKRAINE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE “SPECIAL PROJECT”

InformNapalm presents itself as a volunteer-run intelligence service. But this is a deception. A Ukrainian Ministry of Defense PowerPoint presentation leaked in 2015 refers to it as a “special project” of the ministry, along with a number of others who themselves stand in need of further investigation.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/acsas.png

Corroborating information comes in the form of the identity of the person who registered the domain name informnapalm.org – the aforementioned Vladimir Kolesnikov on March 29 2014, six months before the first of the kill list domains were registered. Kolesnikov is the webmaster of InformNapalm. His Linkedin page describes his involvement with InformNapalm as beginning as a “translator” in February 2014, graduating to System Administrator in March 2014 and DevOps engineer in April 2014. Helpfully Vladimir lists another “volunteering” role from February 2014 with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

This role involved: “participation in information operations in the interests of the anti-terrorist operation in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, and assistance in counteraction to information aggression by the Russian Federation.” Myrotvorets is, therefore, a project of InformNaplam which is, in turn, a ”special project” of the Ministry of Defense.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Untitled-design1-2-744x744.png
Volodymyr Kolesnykov | LinkedIn page

Other links between the two projects include that Oksana Tinko, in registering the domain Myrotverots.center, used her informnapalm.org email address. On her Facebook page she claims to have worked at InformNapalm since March 2014. This conforms to the detail (https://web.archive.org/web/20161010105352/http://cyber-berkut.org/docs/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%82.rtf) in data released by the Russian hacking group Cyber-Berkut which showed that Tinko had become an admin on the Operativ.info and informnapalm.org sites on March 29 2014.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/fwe-768x605.png
Oksana Tinko on Facebook | Source

Tinko is fond of displaying Nazi and Banderite imagery on her social media. There is a swastika on her Github page and her Facebook profile features a background with the red and black colors of Bandera and a star of David together with a reptilian dressed as an orthodox Jew.

The journalist George Eliason who excavated much of the story of InformNapalm reports that the people involved are “mostly Pravy Sektor” (Right Sector), in other words far right supporters of Stepan Bandera. Pravy Sektor uses the red and black colors of Bandera in its flag, just as Tinko does on her Facebook profile. In late 2019 Myrotvorets proudly displayed a portrait of Bandera on its homepage to mark the Nazi collaborator’s birthday.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/as-768x393.png
“January 1 — Stepan Andriyovych Bandera’s birthday“

In the early days of the Myrotvorets project the InformNapalm logo was prominently displayed. It was still there on May 13, 2016, but was gone by August of that year. This may have been because of its publication of the list of thousands of journalists’ names which caused significant backlash and led to a statement that “taking into account the reaction… the Center ‘Peacemaker’ made a difficult decision to close the site.” The site did not shutter, however. By 2017, Myrotvorets continued to boast of its links with InformNapalm, stating:

Volunteers of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA), the intelligence community InformNapalm and the Peacemaker Center publish their research based on information contained in the mail of terrorists and Russian authorities.

As this passage highlights, all three organizations worked closely together.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Untitled-design3_edited.jpg
InformNapalm logo 2014 and 2023 – showing how it has tried to mellow its image.

It would appear that InformNapalm is the parent or coordinating body for an evolving team of pro-Ukrainian hackers, researchers, journalists and devotees of the far right. InformNapalm claims that: “We mostly rely on open sources and widely employ different OSINT methods of information gathering. We also receive some information from insiders (HUMINT) and hacktivists.” It also claims: “InformNapalm does not participate in or encourage computer hacking activities.”

This is an admission of receipt of intelligence information (“Humint”) from Ukrainian and perhaps other intelligence services. The disavowal of participation or encouragement of hacking is undermined by their own statements, as in this one by one of the hackers:

At first we had a separate group called RUH8… Our cooperation with other hacker groups was established thanks to the InformNapalm …where we all submitted information for processing and publication

RUH8 is an abbreviation for Russia Hate. InformNapalm claimed in 2020 that it “is a purely volunteer endeavour which does not have any financial support from any government or donor.” This is, of course, a lie.

PROMETHEUS

It is a matter of public record that InformNapalm has been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA proxy. For example, in its now-deleted list of funding for Ukraine in 2016, the NED reported that $100,000 was given to a project of “Prometheus”. It would “conduct open-source investigations that monitor and spotlight external Russian military actions and post them on its popular and trusted website, https://informnapalm.org”. The Prometheus domain Prometheus.ngo was also registered by Volodymyr Kolesnykov on March 11, 2016.

Prometheus advertises two “information partners” in its operation, InformNapalm and The Ukraine Media Crisis Center. InformNapalm, created in early 2014, obviously only became a project of Prometheus after the latter was created in 2016.

The Ukraine Crisis Media Center is of course another Western-funded project. It even admits to a long list of Western State funding on its website (including USAID, Embassies of the U.S., Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Germany), as well as military/intelligence funding agencies such as the NED, NATO, the U.K. based Institute for Statecraft (a military intelligence cut out), regime change enthusiasts at the Soros network of foundations and the Open Information Partnership an MI6 funded project from the U.K., in which Bellingcat and other MI6 contractors were/are involved.

An avalanche of Western cash has been showered on such organizations, all of which appear to have gone to some trouble to disguise their real origins and connections (including to each other), not to mention their affiliations to the Banderite far right.

BACK TO NATO

InformNaplam boasts in its list of achievements of working closely with NATO run groups such as the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Lab and MI6/CIA cutout Bellingcat. It claimed to have identified “persons who could be involved in the shootdown of Flight MH17 …(this information was used in the reports by our colleagues from Bellingcat team).” The organisation also claims to have conducted “exclusive analysis of SurkovLeaks – the email dump belonging to [Russian politician] Surkov’s reception office obtained by Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (the authenticity of the emails was reconfirmed by several reputable organizations, including Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab)”. The DFR Lab and Bellingcat, are not “reputable” organizations but rather are part of NATO information operations against Russia.

These boasts put both the DFR Lab and Bellingcat in the frame as collaborators with the Nazi kill list, which is itself based on the OSINT techniques pioneered by both groups. Now that we know that the “volunteers” of Mirotvorets, InformNapalm and the Ukraine Hacker Alliance are a project of the Ukrainian government with significant NATO support, the role of the DFR Labs and Bellingcat appears to be part of that support for the Nazi kill list.

In the West, these Nazi collaborators and apologists attempt to push an altogether softer narrative. Thus, we have Eliot Higgins of the Informnapalm “colleague” Bellingcat attempting what he presumably thought was a condescending denial in tweeting: “’Myrotvorets is a Ukrainian government kill list’ is rapidly becoming the most effective way to identify the dumbest people in this website.”

We can even find Aric Toler, also of Bellingcat, criticizing Myrotvorets while appearing to disavow any knowledge that Bellingcat had worked with them. In response, the founder of InformNaplam (and we must assume Myrotvorets too) Roman Burko, defended the activities of the kill list as purely a question of style.

So, the evidence here supports the contention that NATO is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. There is a link between the Nazi kill list and the blacklist to which I was added and that is that both are operations of the regime in Kiev. A further link is the deputy head of the regime-created Center for Strategic Communication, Mykola Balaban. He cut his teeth working on the InformNaplam/Mirotvorets operation, as was revealed in a document released by Russian hackers Cyber-Berkut in late 2015 in which he featured as an admin of both the operativ.info and informnapalm.org sites from November 2014.

Finally, it seems likely a key reason why the Nazi kill list remains online is that it is protected by the regime, the U.S. government and NATO.

Bill Ryan

13th May 2023, 12:33

Such a disappointment, Bill.

Made me laugh. :) You sound like a teacher chiding an independently-thinking schoolboy who fails to confirm to your diktat of how you insist everything has to be.

Your 'facts' are all wrong, you have no idea what's really happening in the world, and you're part of the widespread global problem, not the solution.

Avalon presents you with every opportunity to acquaint yourself with actual facts (not the ones 'fact-checked' by CBC), but you think you know it all.

You don't. But even my saying this won't make an iota of difference. There's really no value (to anyone else) in your being a member any more, and we'll retire you if you wish. Just let us know.

Here's what I replied just now to a longstanding member who reported your post, asking me, with genuine puzzlement, if you were really who you said you were. It may be worth reading. I pay you due credit, and also very truthfully state the problem.

(I resisted the temptation to channel Mashika (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/member.php?45714-Mashika), who would have fiercely and mercilessly taken apart your every sentence. Aged just 26, she's wiser, smarter and more knowledgeable than any teacher I've ever known.)

~~~
Many thanks for your reported question about Fellow Aspirant (Brian). I met him personally a few years ago, when he came to Ecuador on holiday with his wife.

We had a long and pleasant dinner, and he's a genuinely very nice person. It's simply the mind virus. If you don't have the immunity, it just does its thing and takes over a person's whole worldview.

So it's a paradox. He never breaks any forum guidelines, and back in 2018 former moderator Paul (now 'The Pythonic Cow') started a backstage mods report thread titled 'Why is Fellow Aspirant still a member?' (As I recall, that was all about his posts regarding then-President Trump and American politics.)

I replied to Paul and the rest of the team that Brian was always patient, articulate and civil, and that we really did have to allow free speech in the form of differing political opinions. But I do confess, I'm not nearly as patient myself now as I was even last year, and as I posted in this thread...

Social media discussion rarely changes anyone's minds (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?120133-Social-media-discussion-rarely-changes-anyone-s-minds.&highlight=opinions)

...I'm no longer convinced (at all!) that 'free speech' is always helpful in terms of helping people change their views. We see this predicament everywhere now, including on Avalon.

What to do about Fellow Aspirant, I don't know. I'll reply to his post, very probably (and others may do too!), but I'm still on my first cup of coffee early in the morning here in Ecuador, so I'll need to think about it a little.

I might just channel Mashika (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/member.php?45714-Mashika), something I sometimes have a lot of fun doing :) , but I do know that'd almost certainly inflame things more. But I might just ignore it all, as it's a major distraction on an important news- and-updates thread, and just continue to report any new (and factual!) Ukraine/Russia information as usual.
:focus:

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:05

Text:

According to updated data, 2 Mi-8 helicopters, a Su-34 bomber, and a Su-35 fighter were shot down. All aircraft fell in the Bryansk region. Helicopter pilots and the Su-34 bomber were killed. This appears to be planned operation with a massive launch of missiles from the Chernihiv region.

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1657359391715377152

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Brian Berletic

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1657357070541242371

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https://twitter.com/DagnyTaggart963/status/1657350607726936064

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:12

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657239802754879490

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◾" Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine.... unprejudiced mind..."

◾That's how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution.

Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs. Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue's gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence agencies shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the cold war-the CIA's use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

UkraineHumanRightsAbuses

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657237914982535168

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:19

https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657348092658610177

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:28

Text:
The United States, even in the event of a default, is going to send money to Ukraine. According to White House spokesman John Kirby, Washington will have the opportunity to finance Kyiv until the end of the current fiscal year using funds already allocated by Congress.

The current fiscal year in the United States ends on September 30, and before the end of this period, ordinary Americans can only rejoice at the dedication of their government, which is ready to send their last dollars to Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657356640369229826

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657354902622838785

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657360033737236484

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https://twitter.com/ReadovkaWorld/status/1657371615594971136

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:31

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657225458931453952

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Bill Ryan

13th May 2023, 13:31

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:32

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657226863331225600

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 13:51

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-economic-war-against-russia-has-failed/

Why the economic war against Russia has failed

There was much mirth in the West this week when Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day parade through Red Square included just one tank, itself a relic from a museum. The inference was that Russia has lost so much military kit in Ukraine that it is a shadow of the military superpower the Soviet Union used to be.

Russia has certainly borne heavy losses (although any country conducting a foreign war would presumably have its military hardware on active duty rather than on ceremonial parade). But we should avoid being smug. The truth is that the war is not going well for the West either – at least in one respect.

When Putin sent tanks into Ukraine on 24 February last year, western countries rapidly adopted a two-pronged strategy. One prong was that they would not engage in direct military conflict, but would support Ukraine with weapons and other military equipment. Some countries were quicker than others, but this part of the strategy has been a remarkable success. Ukraine has managed to resist Russian forces, and to push them back from many areas, even if the outcome is still far from certain.

The other prong, though, has turned out to be blunt: the plan to wage economic war with Moscow, unleashing financial shock and awe on a scale never seen before. Russia was to be cut off almost entirely, with sanctions and boycotts on all imports and exports save for humanitarian ones such as medicines. Putin’s Russia, went the theory, would be impoverished into surrender.

Few people in the West are aware of how badly this aspect of the war is going. Europe has itself paid a high price to effect a partial boycott of Russian oil and gas. UK fossil fuel imports from Russia totalled £4.5 billion in 2021; in the year to January 2023 that was – officially – down to £1.3 billion. In 2020 the EU sourced 39 per cent of its gas and 23 per cent of its oil from Russia; in the third quarter of last year this was down to 15 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

But these figures do not explain the scale of the failure to damage the Russian economy. It soon became clear that while the West was keen on an economic war, the rest of the world was not. As its oil and gas exports to Europe fell, Russia quickly upped its exports to China and India – both of which preferred to buy oil at a discount than to make a stand against the invasion of Ukraine. Worse, some of the Russian oil exported to India appears to have been siphoned back to Europe, with a rise in the number of ships taking refined oil from India through the Suez Canal.

There seems to be some siphoning in the other direction, too. An investigation by the German newspaper Bild has uncovered a disturbing growth in exports to countries bordering Russia. The importing of German motor vehicles to Kazakhstan, for example, rose by 507 per cent between 2021 and 2022 and to Armenia by 761 per cent. Exports of chemical products to Armenia increased by 110 per cent and to Kazakhstan by 129 per cent. Sales of electrical and computer equipment to Armenia are up 343 per cent. What happens to these goods once they reach these former Soviet republics is not easy to establish, but one likely explanation is that they end up in Russia as diverted trade flows. And even if such commodities are not formally being re-exported, many Russian citizens retain visa-free access to those countries and are able to take goods across the border.

The West has had a policy of trying to target wealthy Russians in particular with economic sanctions. But ironically they are the people who can most easily access western goods through diverted trade. It is they who have dual passports; they who can afford to travel abroad in order to shop for their luxury goods. Short of a wholesale global boycott against Russia, it is very hard to prevent western-made goods reaching the hands of wealthy Russians.

The West embarked on its sanctions war with an exaggerated sense of its own influence around the world. As we have discovered, non-western countries lack the will to impose sanctions on either Russia or on Russian oligarchs. The results of the miscalculation are there for all to see. In April last year, the IMF forecast that the Russian economy would contract by 8.5 per cent in 2022 and by a further 2.3 per cent this year. As it turned out, GDP fell by just 2.1 per cent last year, and this year the IMF is forecasting a small rise of 0.7 per cent. And that is all in spite of the war in Ukraine going much more badly than many imagined it would in February of last year. The Russian economy has not been destroyed; it has merely been reconfigured, reorientated to look eastwards and southwards rather than westwards.

It was not necessarily wrong to declare economic war on Russia. The country has suffered harm from western sanctions, even if nothing like on the scale that we imagined we could inflict. But if the West is thinking that in future it can fight wars purely by economic means, without bombs or bullets, it is badly mistaken.

Western military equipment has allowed Ukraine to mount a David vs Goliath battle which it may yet win – and certainly to avoid annexation by Putin. As for economic sanctions, however, we will have to think again.

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https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1657342077317832706

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https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1657370164772626432

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Bill Ryan

13th May 2023, 13:56

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 14:07

https://tass.com/emergencies/1616977

Kiev attacks Lugansk using Storm Shadow missile produced by UK, France — LPR’s mission

The Ukrainian armed forces carried out a missile strike on the settlement of Yubileiny
LUGANSK, May 13. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces attacked on Saturday the settlement of Yubileiny in Lugansk using a Storm Shadow cruise missile produced by the UK and France, according to a statement released by the LPR’s (Lugansk People’s Republic) mission to the Joint Center for Coordination and Control of issues related to Ukrainian war crimes.

"On May 13, 2023, at 9:15 a.m. the Ukrainian armed forces carried out a missile strike on the settlement of Yubileiny of the city of Lugansk (LPR) using one Storm Shadow cruise missile (produced by the UK and France)," the statement reads.

Andrey Marochko, a retired lieutenant colonel in the People’s Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), said that the Ukrainian armed forces used Storm Shadow cruise missiles according to preliminary data.

The LPR’s mission to the Joint Center for Coordination and Control of issues related to Ukrainian war crimes preliminarily said on Friday that the Ukrainians could have used the Grom missile system. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed on Thursday that London was sending Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles to Kiev.

grapevine

13th May 2023, 14:08

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 14:15

Text:

At least 1 of the Mi-8 Helicopters of the Russian Air Force that was Shot Down over the Bryansk Region today appears to have been a Mi-8 MTPR-1 Variant which has Electronic Warfare Capabilities and is specifically used to Suppress Enemy Air Defense Systems, the Russian Military only has roughly 20 of these Helicopters.

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1657385646019715072

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According to Russian Sources today has been the Worst Day in Decades for the Russian Air Force with 2 Mi-8 Transport Helicopters, 1 Su-34 Fighter/Bomber, and 1 Su-35 Air-Defense Fighter being Shot Down over the Bryansk Region of Western Russia by what is claimed to have been either Air-to-Air or Surface-to-Air Missiles which were Launched from Inside of Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1657368327826571273

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🇺🇦🇷🇺 According to updated data, 2 Mi-8 helicopters, a Su-34 bomber, and a Su-35 fighter were shot down All aircraft fell in the Bryansk region. Helicopter pilots and Su-34 bomber died ...

The enemy carried out a planned operation, having made a massive launch of missiles from the territory of the Chernihiv region.

Intel Slava Z

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657375639945527298

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 14:28

https://twitter.com/RothLindberg/status/1656671224792252416

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 14:37

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 14:46

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TravelerJim

13th May 2023, 15:31

The Powers-That-Be always act for multiple reasons - the Ukrainian War is an example of this.

This article goes into one of the reasons for this war: to reset a country - in this case Ukraine - into a WEF-envisioned future.

Very sobering.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraines-future-lies-great-reset

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 15:44

https://twitter.com/BhadraPunchline/status/1657390183275175940

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https://bulgarianmilitary.com/amp/2023/05/13/uk-knows-well-how-we-killed-storm-shadow-over-damascus-russia/

UK knows well how we killed Storm Shadow over Damascus – Russia

Russia continues to make statements about the long-range Storm Shadow “fire-and-forget” air-to-surface missiles delivered to Ukraine. Various proposals are already being heard, some logical, some quite dangerous.

For example, Alexey Zhuravlev, a Russian politician from the State Duma proposes that air defense systems leave the Russian border and be deployed primarily by politicians, Russian air defense systems should be moved away from the Russian borders to the range of these missiles. Zhuravlev also said that as long as the range of the British missile is at such a distance, the Ukrainian troops should be pushed from the Russian border.

There were also the first suggestions that Russia would “strike” Western Ukraine. “The supply route must be cut”, is the reason for such a request from Mikhail Shermet, a Russian deputy from the State Duma.

However, other comments are less concerned about Storm Shadow’s effectiveness. Russia has already shot down more than one Storm Shadow missile in Syria. At the same time, the Russian forces did not use the S-400 or S-300, but the BUK and TOR mobile air defense systems. Alexei Leonkov, a military expert, reminded both Ukraine and Britain of this fact.

He even indicated a specific date – April 14, 2018. Then a missile attack begins over Damascus. Leonkov recalled that it was on this day that Russian anti-aircraft missile systems first faced Storm Shadow.

Leonkov makes a very important explanation – the rocket cannot change its route. I.e. it follows the target along a predetermined route. Not only can this route be predicted, but the missile can be intercepted and tracked all along the way.

As we already wrote, Storm Shadow is an air-launched missile. The Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-25 cannot carry this missile because it alone exceeds the payload weight. But Su-24 and Su-24 are capable of carrying it.

At this time, there is no officially confirmed information that one of the two combat aircraft has received integration to program the missile, but there are assumptions based on information from on-site and open sources. This means that the missile has to be programmed on the ground, then launched from the air. Storm Shadow allows for similar programming.

The first reports have already appeared that Storm Shadow has hit a target – a factory in Luhansk. In fact, it is quite possible that the delivery of the missile[s] took place long before the announced date. This is an important clarification because, according to the announcement, the missile was launched by a Su-24 bomber of the Ukrainian Air Force.

Can the Su-24 be so quickly integrated with the ability to program the missile? No, but this integration didn’t happen in the last 24 hours, but at least five months ago. Back in February, we informed that Ukraine will receive these missiles. Our information is based on tracking specific actions in Poland. It was there that Ukraine sent the Su-24 to be integrated with programming capabilities and this happened in December 2022. There is even information that the missile was then already tested on how to communicate with the Ukrainian bomber.

Going back to the comment of the Russian military expert Leonkov in 2018 over Syria, Russian air defense systems shot down at least 71 Western-made missiles. Not all of them are Storm Shadow, says the Russian, recalling that the Tomahawk has also been involved in attacks over Syria and is also among the downed missiles.

Let him recall what Russia had deployed around Damascus in April 2018. This will give an indication of what can be deployed in Ukraine today. In 2018, the Russians deployed Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, including the S-125, S-200, 2K12 Kub, and Buk, around the Syrian capital to repel attacks.

However, according to Leonkov, the Russian armed forces will have problems with the Storm Shadow if the Ukrainians change the height of the missile’s flight. For example, if it flies at a low altitude, it becomes almost invisible to the scanning radars of large air defense systems, whose purpose is to intercept such missiles.

Photo credit: Twitter

Leonkov emphasized that in recent weeks, the presence of drones has been activated in the Kaluga and Ryazan regions. Some of them manage to hit the target, while others are shot down. But Leonkov believes that these drones were sent to test the route to wipe out Storm Shadow. If the Ukrainians follow this route, they have a chance to hit the Russian target, the expert believes because although the route will be known, the missile will be hidden from radars due to the height of the flight.

But despite Storm Shadow’s barely visible form, there are experts, the Russian military, who believe their air defenses will intercept and destroy them.

Bruce G Charlton

13th May 2023, 16:14

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657226863331225600

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I would say that the sanctions/ economic war succeeded in their real objective - which was to add weight to the galaxy of other policies (e.g. mass migration, the zero-carbon agenda, destroy the West, the anti-natalist/ family developments of the sexual revolution, antiracism, deliberate inflation, the covid-vax measures etc etc) designed to destroy all Western nations.

Bruce G Charlton

13th May 2023, 16:24

Quite an important incident in what seems like a significant further escalation. What'll be happening in Russia now, for sure, is that Putin will be under increasing pressure to start to take much more decisive action.

I've said that before, but Putin has always maintained his (astonishingly) tolerant and moderate stance. However, as I posted elsewhere (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?121009-A-well-known-Polish-clairvoyant-tells-the-future.--Sensitive-Information--Members-Only&p=1556662&viewfull=1#post1556662), I'd really not bet $1000 against all this going nuclear at some point. There's nothing anywhere in the world to indicate this is all going be resolved easily and peacefully.

The west is hell-bent on destroying Russia by fair means or foul. But that's not going to happen. It doesn't matter what one's ideological views are. Russia will defend itself, as it always has done.

Just a further short opinion post from me, for whatever it may be worth. I can feel the steadily growing anger in Russia. I'm sure many other readers can too.

At some point, whether tomorrow, next week, or next month, Putin will quietly and secretly consult with Xi in China and Modi in India, and say:
Dear Friends, bear with me and please look carefully. This and this and this is happening. We're now considering doing this in response. We're starting to feel we have no other option. If we do, will you continue to support us?

I agree completely with Bill's analysis and the probabilities. The West's provocations against have been repeated, relentless and are escalating. The UK promise to export radio-active uranium 'dirty bomb' shells are another and perhaps critical provocation, as soon as they are deployed.

This business can only continue for so long, before Putin is unable to hold-back the pressure. Any other world leader would probably have 'snapped' (or been displaced) long ago; but Putin has been, so far, a tremendously effective (including popular, trusted) leader of his country - probably its saviour from the ongoing (West-led) post-1989 civilizational collapse that prevailed before him.

I interpret these destructively-motivated as attempts by people (and the supernatural evil beings behind them) deliberately to provoke a colossally destructive war including all the Western nations.

Thus the real purpose behind the UK supplying radioactive ammo (and all the rest of them), is to evoke escalation, and to make the UK a prime target for reprisals - leading to massively escalated UK involvement, leading probably to the near destruction of much of the most populous areas of the UK.

Note on the UK, as a prime example of the general picture:

The UK 'leadership'-puppets do not, and have not for many years, operate for the national interest of the country, never mind for the well-being of its native population. They reflexly favour other nations over the UK, other peoples over the British - indeed, they often reveal a visceral loathing of the native population and are tirelessly trying to replace them with... anyone, from anywhere-else.

The leadership class (among who I worked for several decades) very obviously regard themselves as part of the global elite, administering the country on behalf of what they have been told is good for the long-term future of 'the world'.

Of course, the UK leadership class are mostly merely mid-level dupes of a very different agenda than they suppose, and which will have no place for them on the few lifeboats from the tsunami of global collapse and destruction that is being engineered from the top-level.

What applies to the UK, applies to the rest-of-the-West - mutatis mutandis.

Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 17:56

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1657435959233847298

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 18:09

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657426568413683712

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 18:14

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 18:38

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Ravenlocke

13th May 2023, 18:43

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Ukr sources report that Zelensky’s negotiations with the Pope ended in vain, the format of negotiations was imposed on Ukraine, and Zelensky outlined a unified position - only the Ukrainian formula for peace. Kiev understands that any alternative format other than the Ukrainian formula will mean the defeat of Ukraine, which is why the Chinese peace plan will never be implemented.

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657451315281182720

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ExomatrixTV

13th May 2023, 21:58

Trump Gets Ukraine Question RIGHT! CNN Melts Down!(and all other War hawk Liberal MSM):

i2_DNzXPVt0
During the recent Donald Trump Town Hall on CNN, moderator Kaitlan Collins pressed the former President on whether he would like to see Ukraine victorious in the war against Russia. Trump refused to answer, instead insisting that he would just like to see the killing end, and his focus wasn’t on who wins or loses. Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss Trump’s answer and why the warmongers at CNN would see anything short of demanding an outright Ukraine victory as unacceptable.

DoD Revolving Door Report.pdf (https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DoD%20Revolving%20Door%20Report.pdf)

Bill Ryan

13th May 2023, 22:39

XgRH4Mrsvi8In this new video, from 43:25 for about 8 minutes, Alexander Mercouris makes essentially the same point as I shared above earlier today that (in Mercouris' own words) Putin has exercised remarkable restraint, but if something 'ugly' were to happen then he'll be under great pressure to respond militarily far more strongly and clearly.

The other point that Mercouris makes, I think quite rightly, is that there's a kind of week-by-week, month-by-month creeping escalation here (my words, not his), simply because the western nations are confident that they can continue what they're doing and that Putin won't do anything to stop them. (But at some point, of course, he will.)

ExomatrixTV

13th May 2023, 22:40

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 01:06

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Location of the downed planes and helicopters (green map is Ukraine border, Chernigov Region and partly Sumy region)

9 people died today as a result of the crash of Mi-8 helicopters and Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft in the Bryansk region.

In the city of Klintsy, all three crew members died in the crash of a Mi-8 helicopter.

In Unechsky district - Volkustichi, the crash of the second Mi-8 helicopter killed three more crew members of the combat vehicle.

Two pilots of a Su-34 fighter-bomber died in the village of Nizhnyaya

In the village of Suretsky Moroviy, the pilot of a Su-35 fighter was killed.

The combat vehicles were part of the same air group. Su-34s worked on targets in the Chernihiv region, Su-35S provided cover, one Mi-8 carried out jamming, the second helicopter - in case of evacuation of pilots. Nobody managed to survive.

Lord of War

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657468439907164164

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https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1657451523004325888

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 01:14

UK media admits, 'shock and awe' sanctions have failed

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 01:26

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The Washington Post reports that Zelenskiy planned to seize Russian border towns and strike deep into Russian territory to gain a bargaining chip in future negotiations with Russia.

It is interesting that the article in WP comes out in parallel with the events in the Bryansk region. Actually, the very publication of such content with an unconvincing reference to some secret data leaked, apparently, is intended to enhance the cognitive effect of the events in the Bryansk region. Goal: demoralization of Russian society.

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 01:29

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Tintin

14th May 2023, 09:05

More on the Klintsy incident here from Simplicius The Thinker. I'll not post the whole article as it may be one that is perhaps too long, but copy some extracts. For those interested in technicalities the whole article can be read here (https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/black-day-for-russian-vvs-as-special)

-----------------------------------------

Black Day for Russian VVS as 'Special Air Group' Destroyed in Ambush

Author: Simplicius The Thinker
Publication date: May 13, 2023

Today (May 13th) Russia lost two Mi-8s, and Su-34, and reportedly an Su-35. All nine pilots were killed. This is likely three in the Mi-8, three in the Mi-8MTPR1 (pilot, copilot and EW suite operator), two in Su-34, and one in Su-35.

These four aerial assets comprised what’s called a ‘special air group’ as they operated together as one unit on a coordinated mission objective. One of the Mi-8s was likely in a recovery role, specifically sent as a craft to recover downed pilots as a precaution, the other was an advanced Mi-8MTPR1, which is an electronics / EW platform. The role of the Mi-8MTPR1 is to provide electronic jamming and cover for the Su-34, whose role was to launch airstrikes, likely in the form of the new FAB-500M-62 UMPC ‘planning’ or glide-bombs. The Su-35’s role in this special air group is to provide air cover against potential hostile air threats, i.e. enemy fighter jets.

....So, in summary: they fly together, the Mi-8MTPR1 jams enemy air defenses from a distance, the Su-34 launches bombs, the Su-35 patrols to make sure no hostile craft approach, and the rear Mi-8 simply loiters as precaution to exfiltrate any downed pilots swiftly should a shoot down occur.

This incident in fact gave us the first such indepth look into how Russia is launching its long range strikes. It’s more sophisticated than many people thought, and doesn’t boil down to just Su-34s randomly winging bombs on their own, but in fact there is an entire system of cover in place.

...

As to people wondering why they were flying so high, when the name of the game these days is fly low beneath radar coverage. As per the mission requirements, this mission calls to fly high as obviously for the Mi-8MTPR1 to jam enemy AD, it has to be high enough to detect those AD systems, which in turn can detect it also and then it’s a matter of who gets off first. Jamming systems are not perfect. No system on the planet is completely failsafe or foolproof. We’ve seen numerous times the Vitebsk system on Ka-52s successfully fended off Manpads, some videos even showing a Ka-52 losing several Manpads in this way.

But no system is perfect because it all comes down to the specific conditions of an encounter. There are small “blind spots” and other such things in every system depending on its orientation and the various parameters of its height, distance, etc.

As for the other planes, obviously they too had to be up high because if the Su-34’s job was to launch glide bombs, these can only be launched from a high altitude so that they can have a lot of room to ‘glide down’ while they stretch their legs to 30-50km, or whatever their max range might be. Clearly, this was an operation in an area where Russia often operates and felt that the long range AD was suppressed or nonexistent.

So, what was it that actually hit the craft? My first reaction—as was many people’s—was that these were Manpad-armed DRG saboteurs that had infiltrated the Russian border region near Bryansk, due to the fact that the craft all fell deep in Russian territory. However, after more facts came to light, this appears a fairly classic hit of a medium/long range system, most likely a Ukrainian BUK. Although, there are some major problems for the BUK possibility I’ll mention afterwards. First, a few key pieces of evidence:

- The pilots were all killed, giving no chance at ejection. This would not happen with Manpads because they are often much weaker (far smaller warheads), doing enough damage to burn out the engines or clip a wing, but not to catastrophically destroy the plane instantly. They typically still give a chance for the pilots to eject.

- The video showing the falling Su-34 wrecks appears to show the entire front of the plane completely destroyed which likely can only be from a quite powerful warhead and definitely not a manpad.

- There are now videos showing that Russian Mi-8s continue flying in this region near the shoot down location, but they are now hugging the ground, flying just barely over rooftops. If the threat was Manpads, they would be doing the opposite as flying 15k+ feet would go beyond Manpad range (or even lower for some of them). This seems to imply they are hiding beneath radar coverage of long range systems.

And lastly, we have the photo of one of the Mi-8 rotors, perforated with fragmentation shrapnel. Most AD systems do use fragmentation, although the size of those frag hits seems to point more to BUK than smaller Manpad frags.

So what appears to have happened, is Ukraine somehow snuck an AD system much closer to the Russian border under cover, kept it offline while learning of the Russian strike group’s routine and routes by way of observation or help from U.S. C4ISR systems. Then once the strike group took off and was headed their way, they would need to only fire up their radar system very briefly to designate the target and launch at them.

This is one explanation for how they could have gotten past the Mi-8MTPR1’s Rychag jamming systems.

...For instance, one theory being promulgated is that Ukraine “ambushed” this group with Mig-29s armed with new American long range Aim-120 Amraam missiles. These missiles are fancy and advanced, but the problem is, it doesn’t matter how powerful your missiles are if your aircraft’s radar is the weak bottleneck. The Mig-29’s radar is infamously lackluster compared to the Russian Su-35 that was in the air. Many comparison videos have previously been made but the disparity is something along the lines of: the Su-35 with its famed Irbis-E radar can detect the Mig-29 at something like 250-400km while the Mig can only detect the Su-35 at maybe 60-120km at the most, give or take.

But some have rebutted by saying: “But American AWACs probably provided the target designation for the Amraam-armed Mig!”

Problem is, as I explained many times before, the AWACs radar’s max range is 450km, and maybe 600km+ for gigantic high flying targets like Tu-95 bears. This is due to the simple science of radar horizons and earth curvature.

the area of shoot downs is roughly 650km+ from the closest possible AWACs position. It’s very unlikely that it can see that far, and if it could, it’s even less likely that it could provide actual target lock-on data at that resolution/distance. It’s much more likely for radars in Kiev to have detected it, as certain S-300 variants can detect upwards of 250-300km+, it’s just that the missiles can’t engage that far. And the distance from Kiev to the shoot down sites if you’ll recall was about 260km.

The only problem with the BUK theory is that, the shoot down locations may even be out of realistic range of a BUK, or at least at the physical limit. A BUK radar can detect at upwards of 80-120km, but its engagement range is around 45km max. The distance from Klintsy to the Ukrainian border alone is 80km, although there are small juts of land that are exactly 45km.

Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mystery as you can see from the explanations above, there are strong reasons for why it could not have been any of the potential systems. BUK has too short of a range, Manpads are unlikely due to the damage profiles, IRIS-T and other Western systems are much too short-range—for instance, IRIS-T range is only about 15-20km or less. Patriots are very large systems likely only in Kiev which is well beyond their range. It’s highly doubtful they’d smuggle a Patriot in right up to the Russian border, as it’s no where near as mobile as almost everything else on the list.

(..an interesting take)...

MG R:"The recent downing of Russian aircraft was a test of the potential capability of bringing more advanced western systems to the conflict as a means of advocating for delivery of F-16 and/or JAS 39 aircraft. Apparently they rigged current gen NATO ordnance to be released by one of the donated Mig 29s. They are keen on testing IRIS-T, Meteor, AIM-9x block II, AIM-120D, and SM-6. Navy also want to push CAMM/SM-3 missile complexes Storm Shadow is another example of this. understanding is that they handed guidance for these weapons over to NATO AWACs which would make it directly party to the conflict if this information ever got out. of the globohomo Nazi rump state of Ukraine".

----------------

Tintin

14th May 2023, 09:30

DoD Revolving Door Report.pdf (https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DoD%20Revolving%20Door%20Report.pdf)

Thanks John - interesting report from Senator Elizabeth Warren, published last month (April) confirming the flow of funds under cover of 'aid' packages :thumbsup:

Pentagon Alchemy:
How Defense Officials Pass Through the Revolving Door and Peddle Brass for Gold

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/DoD_Revolving_Door_Report.pdf

Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:09

Text:
Comment from Slavyangrad about Storm Shadow:

Deliveries of British Storm Shadow missiles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine have become the next stage in the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. The Kiev regime rejoices, having received from NATO another "wonder weapon" for testing. However, the American MLRS "Haymars" lost their former status after the air defense of the Russian Federation learned to shoot them down. Now the RF Armed Forces will also shoot down British cruise missiles.

According to The Guardian, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed to Parliament the sending of missiles by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He revealed that the cost of each Storm Shadow is around £2.2m. The UK has between 700 and 1,000 of these missiles with a range of up to 290 km and up to 560 km. What type of weapons the Armed Forces will receive and their number, Wallace preferred to hide.

These deliveries were coordinated with Washington, which supported the transfer of missiles at the talks between Wallace and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly in the United States. At the same time, the Pentagon refuses to provide Ukraine with its own long-range missiles. The United States prefers to remain in the shadows - for them, the UK Ministry of Defense turned out to be a convenient subcontractor that implements the plans of the Pentagon without the death of American soldiers and the use of reserve weapons.

British journalists hurried to reassure readers, who were alarmed that Washington was dragging the country into a conflict with the threat of nuclear war. In turn, Kiev assured the British authorities that the new weapons would be used only for defense and on the territory of Ukraine, and not for attacks on Russia.

Storm Shadow themselves, by the way, are not as perfect as they are trying to be. Russian air defense systems can recognize and destroy British missiles in the air in the same way as all other weapons of the West. The only fundamental difference between Storm Shadow and Himars missiles is in the targeting system. American missiles were guided by GPS geolocation, and in the British counterpart, target coordinates are entered immediately before launch.

By the way, the United Kingdom expects to become a global arms exporter if Storm Shadow proves its combat effectiveness in the struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty.

Russian Defense Ministry experts believe that our missile defense [missile defense] systems will cope with new missiles, as happened with the Hymars. The military department has already clarified that the S-400, and S-300 systems will work for such purposes, including the Fort ship air defense system, as well as Buk-M3, and Buk-M2.

It is assumed that Storm Shadow can be installed on MIG and SU airborne aircraft, but this is a dead-end tactic. If only because it requires a long refinement of Soviet aircraft, which Kyiv has almost gone.

It is interesting that earlier the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin, after the military campaign in Afghanistan, refused to use British missiles due to their limited combat effectiveness.

Now the Russian Aerospace Forces control the Ukrainian sky and completely dominate the left bank of the Dnieper, and the launches of large cruise missiles only unmask the enemy.

Join Slavyangrad chat. Your opinion matters.
https://t.me/+B6ixfOM5VkxhODQx

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@Slavyangrad

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https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1657678998141390849

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:26

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⚡️The Russian Ministry of Defense reports that during the fighting near Bakhmut, the deputy commander of the Army Corps for military-political work, Colonel Yevgeny Brovko, was killed.

Also, in the area of Krasny (Ivanovskoye), as a result of injuries received, during the evacuation, the commander of the 4th motorized rifle brigade, Colonel Makarov died.

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In Khmelnitsky, after the strike of the Russian Aerospace Forces, the ammunition for the Leopard and Marder tanks was destroyed. There was also a cargo from Denmark, Germany, Italy and Japan for €200-220 million
Also, in addition to ammunition, €83 million worth of satellite communication systems, military tablets, data encryption systems were destroyed.

Eduard Basurin

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1657650071616274432

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:34

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Ukraine received 200 Storm Shadow missiles from Britain in the first batch, in the second phase they should receive another 400 missiles. Now the Armed Forces of Ukraine are testing missiles against targets on the frontline, and data on the strikes are transmitted by Western intelligence

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https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1657708061019066370

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:38

https://twitter.com/VictoryDay_Hope/status/1657434778344325123

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https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657681979838480384

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https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1657681619803680769

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:47

Text:
🇬🇧UK Government Is Offering £600,000 To Contractors For Social Media Surveillance Of “Misinformation Narratives” - Reclaim The Net

The UK government is ready to spend some $755,000 (£600,000) on a project involving contractors whose job would be to carry out surveillance on social media, on the lookout for “harmful disinformation and misinformation narratives.”

This is revealed in a notice posted on the government’s Contracts Finder site...that shows the authorities are looking for a misinformation and disinformation monitoring and analysis service...

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-government-contractors-social-media-surveillance-of-misinformation

EurasianChoice

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657591947333103618

1657591947333103618

Text:

Sowing Seeds of Plunder: A Lose-Lose Situation in Ukraine – OffGuardian

It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests...

https://off-guardian.org/2023/05/13/sowing-seeds-of-plunder-a-lose-lose-situation-in-ukraine/

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1657590726534873089

1657590726534873089

https://twitter.com/Tidal_13/status/1657718579704242179
1657718579704242179

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle

Pandora Papers Reveal Offshore Holdings of Ukrainian President and his Inner Circle

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property.

Actor Volodymyr Zelensky stormed to the Ukrainian presidency in 2019 on a wave of public anger against the country’s political class, including previous leaders who used secret companies to stash their wealth overseas.

Now, leaked documents prove that Zelensky and his inner circle have had their own network of offshore companies. Two belonging to the president’s partners were used to buy expensive property in London.

The revelations come from documents in the Pandora Papers, millions of files from 14 offshore service providers leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with partners around the world including OCCRP.

The documents show that Zelensky and his partners in a television production company, Kvartal 95, set up a network of offshore firms dating back to at least 2012, the year the company began making regular content for TV stations owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, an oligarch dogged by allegations of multi-billion-dollar fraud. The offshores were also used by Zelensky associates to purchase and own three prime properties in the center of London.

The documents also show that just before he was elected, he gifted his stake in a key offshore company, the British Virgin Islands-registered Maltex Multicapital Corp., to his business partner — soon to be his top presidential aide. And in spite of giving up his shares, the documents show that an arrangement was soon made that would allow the offshore to keep paying dividends to a company that now belongs to his wife.

A comedian and actor who had been famous since the 2000s, Zelensky began his political rise a few years after taking on a starring role in the political satire “Servant of the People,” which began airing on the oligarch’s network in 2015. The show starred Zelensky as a humble history teacher whose anti-corruption rant in class is filmed by a student, goes viral online, and wins him national office.

In a case of life imitating art, Zelensky ended up winning the real-world Ukrainian presidency just three-and-a-half years after the show’s launch, with more than 73 percent of the vote.

Zelensky capitalized on widespread public anger at corruption, but his 2019 campaign was dogged by doubts over his anti-graft bona fides, given that his campaign was boosted by media belonging to Kolomoisky — who is accused of stealing US$5.5 billion from his own bank and funneling it offshore in concert with his partner, Hennadiy Boholiubov.

In the heat of the campaign, a political ally of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko published a chart on Facebook purporting to show that Zelensky and his television production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms that allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoisky’s Privatbank.

That ally, Volodymyr Ariev, didn’t provide evidence, and his accusations have never been proven. But the Pandora Papers show that at least some of the details in this alleged scheme correspond to reality. The leaked documents show information on 10 companies in the network that match structures detailed in Ariev’s chart.

The new documents show that part of the network was managed with help from Fidelity Corporate Services, an offshore consultancy that was one of 14 firms whose documents make up part of the Pandora Papers leak. The documents show that Zelensky and his partners used companies based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Belize, and Cyprus.

Two of Zelensky’s associates in the offshore network, who were also part of his TV production company, now hold powerful positions. Serhiy Shefir is Zelensky’s top presidential aide, while Ivan Bakanov heads the Security Service of Ukraine.

These powerful positions also come with risks. Shefir narrowly escaped an apparent assassination attempt when his car was fired on outside Kyiv on September 22. He was unharmed, but his driver was wounded.

Zelensky has repeatedly pledged to rein in oligarchs. The day after the attack on Shefir, the country’s parliament passed a bill that would create a register of oligarchs and bar them from financing political parties or taking part in privatizations. Zelensky said that the attempt on Shefir’s life will receive a strong response and will not influence his fight against vested interests.

A spokesman for Zelensky declined to comment. Shefir and Bakanov did not respond to questions.

The rest of the article here,

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1657675635215724546

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:55

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657643602225274880

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657639244435791873

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657648827267006464

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657648853670133761

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1657652915626995712

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 13:59

Text:
Statements by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation:

– Commander Makarov, who led the battle in the area of the village of Krasnoe, died after being wounded while repelling an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine;

– Deputy Commander of the Army Corps, Colonel Brovko, died heroically while repelling an attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Bakhmut;

– All attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Bakhmut, as well as other settlements of the DPR, were repelled, breakthroughs of the defense of Russian troops were successfully repelled;

– A successful. missile strike on the deployment points of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and warehouses. The goal of the strike was achieved.

https://twitter.com/TVajrayana/status/1657718408236916738

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Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 14:07

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1657738101735694337

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1657731971655561217

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1657738888591339520

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1657697282546970625

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1657655076477911042

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Bill Ryan

14th May 2023, 16:21

This is the location of Olenya Air Base:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/10/14/11/63467079-11315297-image-a-50_1665744920252.jpg

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/62713

DDGeopolitics/62713

Bill Ryan

14th May 2023, 16:25

This 30-second video clip, with good English subtitles, really is worth watching.
(Fellow Aspirant, pay attention :) )

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/62718

DDGeopolitics/62718

Bill Ryan

14th May 2023, 19:33

https://twitter.com/LogKa11/status/1657428063280418818

1657428063280418818Not just 'large', but enormous. And now it seems that the ammunition stocks that were all blown sky-high may have included the British-donated depleted uranium tank shells.

https://t.me/intelslava/47714
https://t.me/intelslava/47715

intelslava/47714
intelslava/47715

Satori

14th May 2023, 22:04

Absolute evil, insanity. WTF!! Stop, stop now. “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” So, just stop this, now!

Bill Ryan

14th May 2023, 22:35

Here's Scott Ritter, who's not been seen on YouTube recently because he's on a tour of Russia — a book tour, but also a speaking tour. I'm guessing he's getting a huge amount of public attention there, and the Kremlin will also surely be listening carefully. Everyone knows who he is.

This is a condensed 18-minute video, which I found worth every minute. The questions from his Russian host are edited out, so it's really a monologue on a variety of issues.

Regarding the video title, that's addressed towards the end, starting at 14:50. He argues, I think correctly, that Russia must end this (a) decisively and (b) quickly, or else the US will be doing everything they can to turn the extended war of attrition on to them.

Russia must win ASAP, here is why

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuHt0jppXU

Ravenlocke

14th May 2023, 22:49

Text:

Former Ukrainian MP and Azov deputy commander Igor Mosiychuk released a video discussing recent strikes in Khmelnitsky and Ternopol, claiming that the depleted uranium theory is correct and recommending that children be evacuated from the explosion sites. He alleged that the warehouses contained a large stockpile of depleted uranium ammunition that was blown up.

https://twitter.com/runews/status/1657849253912354816

1657849253912354816

Fellow Aspirant

15th May 2023, 04:50

Ewan

15th May 2023, 08:15

Bill Ryan

15th May 2023, 11:21

Well, okay Bill. I've watched the clip - even my wee attention span can handle 36 seconds. ;)

I come away with great admiration for Zelenskyy as a peace seeker. What he says is what he has always consistently argued, right up until the invasion: can't we all just get along? He lists all the ways in which the Ukrainian and Russian people are alike what they share in common and have always shared in common - right down to their blood. He argues that everyone within Ukraine should be allowed to live in peace, as citizens of Ukraine. He wants them to be able to speak Russian if they wish, and be left alone - a very tolerant and broad minded view that admonishes those who say they wish to abolish the use of Russian within the borders of Ukraine. These discontents, by the way, are part of the Putin propaganda apparatus who are trying to stir up trouble and give Putin the excuse he needs to invade. Zelenskyy preaches brotherhood and peace!

What he does not do is rail against the existence of Russia or urge that Ukraine invade Russia because it rightfully belongs to Ukraine. He does not claim that every Russian citizen should be exterminated like rats because they are scum, a degenerate subhuman race.

Yet these are the views expressed by Putin's people to justify their genocidal scourging of Ukraine. They not only want violence, they want to exterminate every citizen of a country that views them as family. A country that has never threatened them in any way. Putin's "excuse" for invasion was to act as a saviour to those Russian speakers inside Ukraine who were being subjected to inhumane treatment by the Ukrainians. Clearly, as far as Zelenskyy is concerned, this will not happen. Russian speakers are to be treated fairly and given all of the freedoms of Ukrainian speakers. So what was the justification for Putin's invasion? Exactly what were the Ukrainians doing to Russian speakers? Putin's agitators were full of outrage, but for what, actually?

Zelenskyy is doing his best to calm things down, to mollify the propagandists. To no avail. Putin ignored Zelenskyy's views and efforts (as they are so clearly expressed in this video) and launched his shocking super violent genocidal attacks against the innocent civilians of Ukraine, a campaign that the world has seen before with the rise of Nazi Germany. Their dozens and dozens of concentration camps with gas chambers and ovens were designed to be the final solution to the plague of degenerate scum and subhumans that infested their Reich.

So, Bill, I'm glad I complied with your pedantic demand; I found an admirable man preaching tolerance and compassion. :cool:

Are you having a change of heart?

Namaste,

BrianWhat's happened here is that you've just shown, entirely accidentally, that you barely know a thing about Zelensky and how much he has changed (since that clip was filmed, back in 2019).

The reason he has changed is that since becoming president he's been used as a puppet by the US to trigger the long-planned neocon war designed to bring Russia down.

Everything he says in those 36 seconds has been contradicted now, and his stance on everything has reversed 180º. He's not a "peace-seeker" at all. He's become (effectively) a mass-murderer of his own people, and is in large part responsible for destroying his own country.

I rarely do this, but I have to make the point. I don't have the time or energy to present fact after fact after fact (which every other Avalon member posting on this thread already knows), so here are a couple of (anonymized) posts by other mods who commented on this after your post had been reported.

The provisional thread title (in the mods' backstage section) is "Fellow Aspirant hasn't looked at what has been happening".

The mods' comments were:

~~~

Fellow Aspirant hasn't looked at anything that has been happening in Ukraine at all and likes Zelensky, and doesn't think he has changed or that anything is wrong. I don't think he will change and maybe it is time to block him from this thread and invite him back after he has studied the situation more closely.

I don't like war at all, and realize this is not just about Russia and Ukraine, but I don't think Fellow Aspirant will be able look at the bigger picture. Maybe rather than retiring him he could just be blocked from that thread?and from another mod:

Brian's missed something crucial here: the video clip is from around the time he was canvassing for the presidency so that puts it around 2019.
~~~

The second comment is accurate. (I don't know for sure if it was 2019 or not, but it was certainly long before the SMO started.)

Mods have no vendetta against anyone, but we do our best to advance one of the main missions of the forum, which is to educate and support. Clearly you're sincere, but it's a 100% straight fact that you just have it all wrong.

If you like, you can start from scratch (as it were) and ask simple questions here on the thread and members will do their honest best to answer them. But if you insist on stating that your views are correct and that you understand the entire situation perfectly, there'll be no way forward.

:focus:

Bill Ryan

15th May 2023, 11:26

Well if your attention span could stretch a little further you might be interested in a little book called "How the West Brought War to Ukraine (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62693035-how-the-west-brought-war-to-ukraine)." by Benjamin Abelow.Here's the book: :thumbsup:

How the West Brought War to Ukraine - Understanding How U.S. And NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe

https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Benjamin%20Abelow%20-%20How%20the%20West%20Brought%20War%20to%20Ukraine%20-%20Understanding%20How%20U.S.%20And%20NATO%20Policies%20Led%20to%20Crisis%2C%20War%2C%20and%20the%20 Risk%20of%20Nuclear%20Catastrophe%20(2022).pdf

https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Benjamin%20Abelow%20-%20How%20the%20West%20Brought%20War%20to%20Ukraine%20-%20Understanding%20How%20U.S.%20And%20NATO%20Policies%20Led%20to%20Crisis%2C%20War%2C%20and%20the%20 Risk%20of%20Nuclear%20Catastrophe%20(2022).pdf

Mark (Star Mariner)

15th May 2023, 12:29

So what was the justification for Putin's invasion?

You must start again --

If you like, you can start from scratch (as it were) and ask simple questions here on the thread and members will do their honest best to answer them.

A good place to make that start is the video below. It will lay it all out for you. Please do watch it Fellow Aspirant. It serves as a very useful beginning to understand the - very important - historical context of this war.

Now, let me make it clear it does not serve as a 'justification' for the war, because there is no justification for war. In my personal opinion, war is the escapade of the fool and the primitive. The loss of a single life in the name of land, wealth, political posturing or whatever, is a travesty to me, be it Ukrainian or Russian. But it is the reason, and that reason - which you are seeking - is what essentially underpins Putin's motivation, and it's important to understand it.

Why Russia is Invading Ukraine
18 million views
If61baWF4GE

ExomatrixTV

15th May 2023, 13:25

Chinese Envoy To Visit Ukraine, Russia On 'Peace' Mission:

G67W37FRP8g

Tintin

15th May 2023, 13:58

A recently published research briefing by Claire Mills (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/authors/claire-mills/) published in the UK House of Commons Library provides in-depth background on the UK Government's assistance to Ukraine.

-----

Military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion

Source: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9477/CBP-9477.pdf

Summary
Defence and security links between Ukraine, NATO members and other allies
and partners started soon after Ukraine’s independence in 1991. They
intensified when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, but primarily took the form
of training and the bilateral provision of non-lethal military equipment.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, bilateral military
assistance has been stepped up, with many allies for the first time supplying
lethal weapons to Ukraine. For some countries such as Germany, and
historically neutral countries such as Sweden, this has represented a
significant reversal of their previous defence policies which ruled out
providing offensive weapons.

The US is the largest provider of military assistance to Ukraine, having
committed $37.6 billion since the start of the Biden administration in January
2021. $36.9 billion of that assistance has been provided since Russia’s
invasion in February 2022.

As the second largest donor, the UK has committed £4.6 billion in military
assistance to Ukraine so far (£2.3 billion in 2022 and a commitment to match
that funding in 2023). The UK is also hosting a training programme (Operation
Interflex), which is supported by several allies, with the aim of training 30,000
new and existing Ukrainian personnel by the end of 2023. The UK has recently
committed to training Ukrainian fast jet pilots but has said that combat
fighter aircraft will not be provided, at least in the short term. The UK is
supplying long-range precision strike missiles.

NATO, as an alliance, has been clear in its political support of Ukraine and
fully supports the provision of bilateral military assistance by individual allies.
NATO is helping to coordinate requests for assistance from the Ukrainian
government and is supporting the delivery of humanitarian and non-lethal
aid. Ukraine is not a NATO member, however, and therefore isn’t party to
NATO’s mutual defence clause under Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. As
such, NATO troops will not be deployed on the ground in Ukraine. Allies have
also ruled out imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine because it would bring
Russia into direct conflict with NATO forces. At the Heads of State and
Government summit in Madrid at the end of June 2022 NATO allies agreed a
new package of assistance for Ukraine that will provide long term, sustained,
support.

The European Union is also providing non-lethal and lethal arms through its
European Peace Facility (EPF). This is the first time the bloc has, in its history,
approved the supply of lethal weapons to a third country. To date, the EU has
committed just over €4.6 billion, including €1 billion of funds to reimburse EPF
countries who have provided urgently needed munitions. A further €1 billion of
EPF funds will be set aside for the joint EU procurement of artillery ammunition.

In October 2022, the EU also approved a new training mission for the
Ukrainian armed forces.

As the conflict in Ukraine has evolved, so has the types of weaponry being
provided. Ahead of an expected spring offensive, the focus has been on
providing Ukraine, in the short window available, with the capability to both
defend their territory and to enable them to retake ground currently under
Russian control. There are, however, fears that the provision of increasingly
more sophisticated weaponry could escalate the conflict

ExomatrixTV

15th May 2023, 14:35

🤑 The War in Ukraine is Just a Money Bag For Zelenskyy - Seymour Hersh:

WkbhZ_qMWwQ
A wise person once said – three things cannot remain hidden for long: the sun, the moon and the truth. We live in a world of misinformation, that which is misleading, and disinformation, that which is deliberately deceptive. Ironically it would seem that the very same authorities and leaders who popularised these terms are in fact those most guilty of their practice.

On 26 September 2022, a series of clandestine bombings and subsequent underwater gas leaks occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines. The pipelines were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, and are majority owned by Gazprom. The mainstream narrative claims the perpetrators and the motives were at best unknown and open to debate.

But, not as far as today’s guest is concerned. He is something of a legendary figure in the world of news reporting and has spent much of the last 50 years elbow-deep in some of the biggest and oftentimes most controversial stories of the day.

I’m talking of course about Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist, political writer and author, who among his many accolades was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

Seymour believes that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines was carried out by the US Navy, the CIA, and the Norwegian Navy, under the direct order of President Biden. To say this has caused a stir in the corridors of power would be something of an understatement.

ExomatrixTV

15th May 2023, 14:39

This 30-second video clip, with good English subtitles, really is worth watching.
(Fellow Aspirant, pay attention :) )

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/62718

DDGeopolitics/62718

I was told he became President BECAUSE he was for both sides, not just one side ... then when he took power he changed his tune! And became totally CORRUPT ... or he was corrupt from the get go?

Does anyone know the exact year (or date) when he said those things?

Hamish

15th May 2023, 16:23

Hello,

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1658104815317032960?cxt=HHwWgICx1ezi4oIuAAAA

and

https://twitter.com/Sinnaig/status/1658099657476538376?cxt=HHwWkICw4c-24IIuAAAA

Vicus

15th May 2023, 16:27

Moscow claims first intercept of UK-made long-range projectile 15 May, 2023

A Storm Shadow cruise missile was listed among several Western weapons shot down by Russian air defenses

Russian forces have downed a UK-supplied cruise missile along with several other weapons fired by Ukrainian forces, the Defense Ministry reported in its daily update on Monday. London confirmed delivering Storm Shadow weapons to Ukraine last week, which were promptly used to attack the city of Lugansk.

The Defense Ministry claimed weapons intercepted in the previous 24 hours included seven anti-radiation HARM missiles, one Storm Shadow missile and seven rockets fired by HIMARS multiple launch weapon systems. It was the first time that Moscow reported downing a Storm Shadow since the UK confirmed their delivery.

Local authorities in Lugansk have claimed the UK missile was used for several recent airstrikes on the Russian city. On Monday morning, two such missiles damaged residential buildings, an office, and cars in the city, a regional monitor reported.

Acting Governor Leonid Pasechnik said that a military aviation school had been hit but that the attack did not cause any casualties, citing preliminary reports from the scene.

Before London sent the cruise missiles, which can strike targets up to 300km (200 miles) away, Kiev did not have any Western weapons with a comparable range. The Ukrainian government had pleaded for months to acquire such arms, but the US and its allies were previously reluctant to extend Ukraine’s striking capability.

https://www.rt.com/russia/576319-storm-shadow-intercepted-moscow/

Vicus

15th May 2023, 16:35

Ukraine lying about taking down hypersonic missile – Izvestia

Kiev’s radar surveillance systems have failed to detect most Kinzhal launches, military sources have told the Russian newspaper
https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.05/thumbnail/645fb6282030271ff1207b2e.jpg

Kiev’s claims that it intercepted a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile with a US-made Patriot air defense system are not true, several sources within the Russian military and defense industry told the newspaper Izvestia on Saturday. Ukrainian forces have failed to hit a single such missile to date, the sources added.

Most Kinzhal launches are not even detected by either Ukrainian or NATO radar surveillance systems, the Russian media outlet claimed, citing the same anonymous sources.

Izvestia also reported that the remnants of what was claimed to be a Kinzhal displayed by Kiev on May 10 might have belonged to another Russian missile – the 9M723 – launched by the ground-based short-range ballistic missile system Iskander-M. Some elements of the two missiles’ construction are similar, although the Iskander-M has been used much more frequently by Russian forces during the ongoing campaign in Ukraine, a military expert told reporters.

Kiev showed on May 10 the remnants of what it said were several missiles, one of which it claimed was a Kinzhal. However, Izvestia’s sources said that, judging by the looks of what was displayed, all of the missiles had fulfilled their aims rather than being intercepted.

On Thursday, another source within the Russian military also called the reports about an interception of the Russian Kinzhal missile by the Patriot system “an attempt to substitute a wish for reality.” The hypersonic missile has a speed exceeding the maximum interception capabilities of any air-defense systems used by Ukraine, including the Patriot, the source told TASS. The Kinzhal also executes a special maneuver to avoid interception and makes an almost vertical approach to the target, the source added.

Kiev reportedly inflates the number of Russian missiles its forces intercept to justify such heavy use of ammunition for the air-defense systems supplied by the West. “The number of interceptions is two-three times higher than the number [of missiles] we really launch,” the source said, adding that sometimes Kiev reports intercepting missiles that Russia did not even launch.

Last week, Ukraine’s Air Force commander, Lieutenant General Nikolay Oleshuk, claimed on his Telegram channel that Kiev's forces had intercepted a hypersonic Kinzhal missile. On May 9, the Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, told journalists that the US Defense Department “can confirm that the Ukrainians took down this Russian missile with a Patriot missile defense system.” He said, though, that he would not “get into the specifics” or try to “characterize” the missile supposedly intercepted by Kiev.

https://www.rt.com/russia/576228-ukraine-lie-intercept-hypersonic-missile/

Vicus

15th May 2023, 16:44

Wagner Chief Clarifies That Only His Forces Making Gains In Bakhmut SUNDAY, MAY 14, 2023

Update(2130ET): Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin clarified late Saturday in an audio statement that despite regular Russian forces having "retreated" from parts of Bakhmut's north (in his words), his own Wagner fighters are still advancing. So it seems his power struggle with the military chain of command and defense ministry continues, as he persists in his controversial narrative that it's only his company that's spearheading gains and engaged in heavy fighting (akin to the battle for Soledar).

Prigozhin stressed that Wagner advanced today, and that Ukraine controls only 1 square km in Bahmut and remains in control of just 29 or so tall buildings.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1657519092692054017

Meanwhile TASS has cited the head of an elite Russian unit to say that intensified Ukrainian engagement has only happened along some parts of the frontlines:

Commander of the Akhmat commando unit and Deputy Commander of the 2nd Army Corps Apty Alaudinov said on Saturday that Ukrainian troops increased their activity only in some sectors of the line of engagement.

Earlier, Yan Gagin, an advisor to Acting DPR Head Denis Pushilin, reported that Ukrainian units had become more active along the entire line of combat engagement.

"The Ukrainian units became active not along the entire line of combat engagement, only in certain parts and still the situation has not significantly changed," Alaudinov told TASS.

"The situation is completely under control in our sector," he added.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/bad-worse-moscow-multiple-russian-aircraft-downed-24-hours-bakhmut-advance-falters

Vicus

15th May 2023, 16:50

Ukrainian Forces Fail in Attempts to Break Through Russian Defenses Near Artemovsk - Moscow Yesterday

https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/04/0c/1109386627_0:0:3049:1716_1280x0_80_0_0_b4eed2cb2a10e9dd3d4a3edf9d3e093d.jpg.webp

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukrainian troops tried to break through the Russian defense lines near Artemovsk (Bakhmut) but all the attacks were repelled, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

"In the Soledar-Artemovsk direction, assault detachments, supported by units of the airborne forces, continued fighting to capture the western quarters of the city of Artemovsk. Over the past day, the enemy has made massive attempts to break through the defenses of our troops north and south of Artemovsk. All attacks of the Ukrainian armed forces are repelled. There are no breakthroughs in the Russian defenses," the ministry said in a statement.
In total, the Ukrainian forces lost over 400 military, 12 tanks, 18 infantry fighting vehicles, two armored transports and a D-20 howitzer in this area over the past day, according to the statement.
While repelling the attacks, the commander of the Russian 4th Motor Rifle Brigade, Col. Vyacheslav Makarov, and the deputy commander for political work of the army corps, Col. Yevgeny Brovko, have died, the ministry said.

Additionally, Russian troops repelled six Ukrainian attacks near Bogdanovka in the Donetsk People's Republic and eliminated over 50 soldiers, 7 tanks and 11 infantry fighting vehicles, according to the statement.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230514/ukrainian-forces-fail-in-attempts-to-break-through-russian-defenses-near-artemovsk---moscow-1110346026.html

Gwin Ru

15th May 2023, 22:00

...

... Ukraine Dirty Bomb, Red Brigade, Book Discussion Schedule (https://odysee.com/@RoystonPotter:b/ukraine-dirty-bomb,-red-brigade,-book:b) 17:00

May 15, 2023

roypotterqa
(https://odysee.com/@RoystonPotter:b)@RoystonPotter
(https://odysee.com/@RoystonPotter:b)

@RoystonPotter:b/ukraine-dirty-bomb,-red-brigade,-book:b

Bill Ryan

16th May 2023, 01:09

An excellent 9-minute clip from WION News (which covers India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, a combined population of nearly 2 billion people).

The question asked is: Who, really, is Zelensky?

The presenter is Palki Sharma, who has a huge following. The criticisms (all documented historical truths) are understated and carefully worded, but have a quite an impact. The best of the YouTube comments that I've seen is

Finally, a background check!
The video was published on 27 March, 2022, nearly 14 months ago. I wonder what Palki is thinking and saying now. :) Recommended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn2TCq6R8Tw

Bill Ryan

16th May 2023, 02:30

Below is an amazing video. It's a couple minutes long, but shows a whole bunch of Patriot missiles being fired, after which (18 seconds before the end of the video) the battery is destroyed by something incoming. Whatever it was was so fast you can't even see the missile itself.

I watched it twice, and the second time (in some dlsbelief!) I counted the missile launches. There were at least 30, maybe 32.

Then I checked on the net, and found this:
A PATRIOT battery (i.e., the basic firing unit) consists of a phased array radar, an engagement control station, computers, power generating equipment, and up to eight launchers, each of which holds four ready-to-fire missiles.
Sure enough, 4x8=32. Wow.

Then I checked how much they cost: $4 million each. (And each launcher is $10 million.) So 32 missiles all fired in about a minute and a half = $128 million.

That's A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS.

And after all that, the Russian missile destroyed the battery anyway.

https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/63129
https://t.me/intelslava/47764

DDGeopolitics/63129
intelslava/47764

ExomatrixTV

16th May 2023, 06:12

Ukrainian 'False Flag' in the making???

https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/taa/1.5/16/1f449.pngI share my suspicion with Kamiel. The figures supplied by Ukraine about gamma radiation are incorrect. I am now really curious how Ukraine comes to these observations.
https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/taa/1.5/16/1f449.pngIt's about the blown-up DU tank shells for Leopard and Challenger tanks stored in Khmelnitsky/Ukraine. are greatly exaggerated. (DU=Depleted Uranium/Depleted Uranium)

Based on what information? I once worked at Siemens-Gammasonics as a service support engineer. I had to use DU daily for calibration of Gamma detection cameras in hospitals, among others.

https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/tc7/1.5/16/261d.pngHowever, Western and Ukrainian state media are going to blow up the story 'to enormous' proportions. Many Ukrainians are now fleeing to the EU from the 'West' of Ukraine.

source (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5721106824659815&set=a.120763461360874)

norman

16th May 2023, 10:15

Is this conversation a realistic integrated aspect of the Ukraine story so far ?

Reconstruction seems a million miles away from what's happening, but the excessive destruction and eventual emptiness of everything Ukrainian including people does point in the direction these ladies are pointing.

Unlimited Hangout with Whitney Webb - The New Ukraine with Stavroula Pabst (https://podbay.fm/p/unlimited-hangout-with-whitney-webb/e/1684207005)
1 hour 10 minutes - Posted May 16, 2023

SHOW NOTES
In this episode, Whitney talks to Stavroula Pabst about the reconstruction efforts in Ukraine and how much of Ukraine's government and infrastructure has been outsourced or sold off to Western corporations that are using the country as a testbed for 4IR technologies.

https://i1.sndcdn.com/avatars-MLSQjSx752SG9a76-CaChpg-t500x500.jpg

Tintin

16th May 2023, 11:56

"Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler." - John Pilger

------------

Almost to the week, a Guardian published article (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger) from John Pilger May 13 2014. Interestingly I think this was one of his last while employed by them:

In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia

(This article is more than 9 years old)
by John Pilger

Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world.

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – "our" terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the US state department noted that, following Nato's campaign in 2011, "Libya has become a terrorist safe haven".

The name of "our" enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or merely offering an alternative to US domination. The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.

Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.

Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend's provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine's population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither "separatists" nor "rebels", as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of "special units" from the CIA and FBI setting up a "security structure" that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.

A doctor described trying to rescue people, "but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate. What occurred yesterday didn't even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent." [see footnote]

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta's defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on "insurgents" would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow "trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation", according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama's grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its "remarkable restraint" after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is "duly elected". As Henry Kissinger once said: "It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true."

In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as "murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned the victims – "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says". Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia's "undeclared war". For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

A popular truism is that "the world changed" following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs "special operations" – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?

www.johnpilger.com

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 13:55

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658463014796886020

1658463014796886020

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658469501183340544

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Text:
The official representative of the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ignat, declined to comment on reports of the destruction of the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in Kiev.

"We will leave it without comment. We will not comment on Russian sources," Ignat said at a press conference.

DDGeopolitics

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658465304937111557

1658465304937111557

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:02

Text:
CIA launches Telegram video to recruit Russian spies

The US Central Intelligence Agency on Monday launched a campaign on social media platform Telegram to recruit Russian spies.

The CIA released a video on the popular social messaging service calling on Russians to come forward with important intelligence and information.

The two-minute video captures Russians going about their daily lives, seemingly contemplating major life choices.

The video uses a series of emotional questions and messages to reach out to patriotic Russian who are disillusioned by recent events, including the war in Ukraine.

“The CIA wants to know the truth about Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who can tell us that truth,” the agency said in the video.

“Your information may be more valuable than you know.”

Former CIA head of counterintelligence James Olson said that the invasion of Ukraine has created an “unprecedented opportunity” for Russians to share information with the US.

“There are a lot of disaffected Russians out there now,” he said. “Today is probably the best period of recruiting Russians that we’ve had.”

In one scene from the clip, a Russian official along with his wife and child are seen at home in difficult circumstances.

“We will live with dignity, thanks to my actions,” the narrator says in Russian as a woman in a car uses her phone to contact the CIA, before the agency’s logo and contact instructions appear.

CIA officials say the video will show ordinary Russians that they can help to make a difference by providing intelligence to the agency, while still remaining patriotic.

The video also details how information can be sent using the Tor browser, a confidential internet browser for encrypted communications.

“Our goal is to provide them with as safe a way as possible to contact us,” another US official said on condition of anonymity.

CIA officials involved in the project told CNN that the video avoids inflammatory content concerning Russia or President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it is meant to appeal to people who are unhappy with Russian policies by “demystifying” the process of contacting the CIA, they added.

The agency is seeking all types of information, including political and economic data, the officials said, adding that they hope to convince hesitant Russians to leak information on the dark web by showing them simple ways to do so.

A “spy vs. spy competition” between the US and Russian security services and intelligence agencies is underway, they said.

US intelligence has used similar recruitment tactics in the past, but are now turning to the encrypted Telegram network because of its popularity among Russians, including senior officials.

Before the war in Ukraine, the FBI launched a similar project aimed at Russians in the US, with the agency specifically targeting the phones of people coming and going from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

https://arabnews.com/node/2304456/media…

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658464270848229377

1658464270848229377

Text:

The CIA is looking for traitors among Russians and has created a Telegram channel for this purpose, where it publishes instructions on how to contact American intelligence.
In a two-minute video with the title "Why I contacted the CIA: my decision."

The video says that "true life takes place where imperceptible changes are made in the souls of people." At the very end, a screensaver appears: "The people around you may not want to hear the truth. We want to."

"I will live a true life. This is my Russia. I will stand. My family will survive. We will live with dignity thanks to my actions," says the voice-over.

https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1658450559756640262

1658450559756640262

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Text:
Steven Seagal about Ukrainian Nazism and the war machine

Renowned American actor, film producer and aikido master Steven Seagal has been living in Russia for the past few years. In a conversation with TV and radio host Vladimir Soloviev, he spoke about his attitude toward Russia, America, and Ukraine. According to Seagal, Nazism is the driving force behind the Ukrainian military. Zelensky himself says he is Jewish, but he works with the Nazis and uses them, knowing they are his best troops.

📱 InfoDefenseENGLISH
📱 InfoDefense
https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1658472076691525638

1658472076691525638

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:09

Text:
Hungary responded to Kyiv's threats to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline

Hungarian security expert György Nogradi threatened Zelensky with the Fifth Article of the North Atlantic Alliance in response to Kyiv's plan to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline.

"According to NATO Article 5, this is an attack on Hungary and therefore on NATO," Nograndi said. He urged to consider Kyiv's plan as an act of saboutage

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658462407218298882

1658462407218298882

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:15

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658473539790594056

1658473539790594056

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658473277885669376

1658473277885669376

https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658472852897808387

1658472852897808387

https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1658406417261289472

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https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1658281863327129601

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https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1658463289490251785

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Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:23

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658470468687626240

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https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1658230274734407683

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https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1658342630185660417

1658342630185660417

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:28

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1658430974894690306

1658430974894690306

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1658422794273824771

1658422794273824771

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1658419669261516800

1658419669261516800

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:32

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658393488369516544

1658393488369516544

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658391633275105281

1658391633275105281

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658385156938366979

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Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:38

https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658375538287812608

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658372674370904064

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658375267885129729

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658372544477421569

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658370720152313858

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https://twitter.com/ArthurM40330824/status/1658374600596627456

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Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:42

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/05/ukraine-air-defense-lessons-.html

Ukraine - Air Defense Lessons

This is factual:

Patriot Missiles Won’t Save Ukraine - National Interest - May 9, 2023

Patriot systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, Patriot will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when Patriot runs out of interceptors.
Moreover, Patriot systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a Patriot radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that Patriot is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.

Those facts were proven last night.

War Monitor @WarMonitors - 1:23 UTC · May 16, 2023
⚡️I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but after careful review of this video, it appears that the air defence battery (most likely patriot) tried to save itself, but failed. It most probably got toasted.
Embedded video

Those were expensive two minutes for the 'West':

Fennec_Radar @RadarFennec - 1:45 UTC · May 16, 2023
I counted 30 Patriot PAC-3 MSE launches here.
The FY2024 costs of these per missile is about $$5,275,000
That was $158,250,000 fired in about two minutes. And as we see, the battery or something else likely got blown up. So it failed in its mission.
Embedded video

This though is likely not true. Kinzhals are simply too fast to be hit by any of Ukraine's air defenses:

Defense of Ukraine @DefenceU - 6:40 UTC · May 16, 2023
Last night, russian terrorists attacked Ukraine with:
- 6 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles
- 9 Kalibr missiles
- 3 ground-launched missiles
- drones

ALL TARGETS SHOT DOWN.
Glory to the Ukrainian Air Forces!
We are grateful to our partner states for strengthening our air defense capabilities.

The casualty numbers in today's clobber report by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation may be a bit exaggerated but the general operational facts are usually true:

The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation launched a combined attack with long-range precision-guided air- and sea-based weapons against the AFU units, as well as depots of ammunition, weapons and military equipment supplied by Western countries.
The goal of the attack has been reached. All the assigned targets have been neutralised.

U.S.-manufactured Patriot surface-to-air missile system has been struck by Kinnzhal hypersonic glide vehicle in Kiev.
...
Fighter Aviation of Russian Aerospace Forces have shot down Su-24 and Su-25 aircraft of Ukrainian Air Force near Varvarovka and Krasnoarmeysk (Donetsk People's Republic).

Air defence forces intercepted seven Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, three HARM anti-radar missiles and seven HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system projectiles.

Air defence facilities have shot down 22 unmanned aerial vehicles close to Ivanovka and Yevgenovka (Donetsk People's Republic), Topolyovka (Lugansk People's Republic), Inzhenernoye, Blagoveshchenka (Zaporpzhye region), and Krynki (Kherson region).

Ukraine does not have an integrated air defense that can attack all air targets at all levels. Russia though has such an integrated system of systems. It makes for a huge difference.

Bill Ryan

16th May 2023, 14:43

Then I checked how much they cost: $4 million each. (And each launcher is $10 million.) So 32 missiles all fired in about a minute and a half = $128 million.

That's A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS.Seems my cost estimate may have been low. :)

https://twitter.com/RadarFennec/status/1658287607938162690
1658287607938162690

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:44

Text:
Nice job Wyatt
@DefensePolitics
coining the term "Citadel" for the dense high-rise residential sector in western Bakhmut (along both sides of Levanevskogo st).
We are fast seeing its fall.

It became more recently divided into sections known to us as "Nest", "Constructor" and "Domino".

The first & second are quickly falling (or have fallen), with UA forces retreating to Domino, pressured from RU forces on 3 sides now that fighting has reached the Children's Hospital.

The Citadel turned out not to be able to hold as well as the NW sector of Bakhmut which would allow the former's encirclement. The area around the Olympic school and Post office were fiercely and intelligently defended, and the entire low-lying area was dominated from the high ground in the north and the high rises in the Citadel itself.
(discussed that possibility earlier here:
https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1653547056173031429 & elsewhere, but still advised against it here https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1655193018033491970)

Wagner, now expert in urban combat seems to be able to advance in a dense urban environment with relative ease (under the right conditions of course, not any). Ukrainian forces meanwhile, correctly defended the NW corner with everything they got, and prefer to retreat from areas of the Citadel while they remain unblocked, then remain there while they give ground in the critical NW sector.

However, if UA forces do not leave Domino pretty soon, they will face at least an operational encirclement there as well, as the NW sector including the "last line of defense" is finally collapsing.

https://twitter.com/ZimermanErik/status/1658455879769903105

1658455879769903105

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 14:51

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1658423471305531395

1658423471305531395

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1658451193692147716

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https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1658225774011326464

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Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:03

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1658481763583406083

1658481763583406083

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:08

https://twitter.com/TVajrayana/status/1658486390940930048

1658486390940930048

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:15

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1658480542759915521

1658480542759915521

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:20

https://twitter.com/its_maria012/status/1658384712325533697

1658384712325533697

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:23

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658490765532872708

1658490765532872708

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 15:28

https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1658478146755391488

1658478146755391488

Bill Ryan

16th May 2023, 15:48

A new 30-minute video from The Duran, well worth watching for those who follow their analyses. Alexander Mercouris (who is very grounded, cautious and balanced), usually holds the floor.

But in this update, Alex Christoforou is clearly showing signs of frustration — which I can entirely understand. :flower:

They cover the recent gigantic explosion, very likely including a stockpile of UK-donated Depleted Uranium shells, as well as the Pope's visit to Zelensky (OMG :facepalm:), new weapons supplies, Zelensky's future, behind-the-scenes US political arguments about the war, and much more.

Russia destroys collective west weapons, as Zelensky tours Europe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoelgwymkJg

atman

16th May 2023, 16:46

Adding to the complexity of the Ukraine/Russia conflict is the fact that Americans, Poles, Ukrainians as well as ethnic separatists of the Russian Federation have long been envisionning and planning the dismantling of Russia into several (and up to 34) separate states.

I just read the French translation (https://www.revueconflits.com/les-projets-de-demantelement-de-la-russie/) of an appendice (https://www.limesonline.com/cartaceo/spezzatini-di-russia-in-salsa-ucraina-polacca-e-americana) to the editorial that was published in the February 2023 edition of the Italian magazine of geopolitics LIMES and that talks specifically about that fact.

Here's an English translation of the article (done mostly through DeepL translator — thus not a perfect translation, but close enough):

_____________________________________________

PLANS OF RUSSIA'S DISMANTLING

Several projects aim to dismantle Russia and divide it into several states. These projects, carried out by Poles, Americans and Ukrainians, reflect both a fear of Russia and an expansionist geopolitical vision.

The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum, a framework for dialogue that brings together the independence demands of ethnic minorities and regional realities in Russia (and their Euro-Atlantic sympathizers—Americans, Poles and Balts), met in the European Parliament on January 31, 2023 for its fifth meeting. The group presented in Brussels its project of "decolonization and reconstruction" of the Russian Federation, sponsored by the Polish component of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party).

Anna Fotyga, MEP and former Polish Foreign Minister (Pis, Law and Justice party) who has been involved in the work of the Forum since its inception, reiterated its founding mission:

"As in the case of the German Third Reich, the Russian Federation, as an existential threat to humanity and the international order, should undergo drastic changes. It is naive to think that Russia, after being definitively defeated, will remain within the same constitutional and territorial framework. The international community cannot adopt a comfortable position waiting for developments, but must undertake a (...) re-federalization of the Russian state, taking into account the history of its imperialism and respecting the rights and desires of its constituent nations."1

DISMEMBERING THE FEDERATION

- Among the speakers at the last forum was Polish-American analyst Janusz Bugajski, a former advisor to the Departments of State and Defense, who has been called "the new Brzezinski" without good reason. His latest book, "Failed State. A guide to Russia's Rupture" has found itself in the crosshairs of the Russian press, presented as a breviary of American plans to dismember the Federation by encouraging ethnic separatism.2

- Since its inauguration (on May 8 in Warsaw), the Forum has gained notoriety and membership. The first map produced by the group (published in the 9/22 issue of Limes 3) envisioned an implosion of Russia from which more than thirty different states, delineated along disparate ethnic and cultural lines, would emerge. We reproduce an update here (color map 6): the most important change is the reduction in the size of the Moscow region in favour of new ethnic-national projects.

https://i.postimg.cc/SKkYK9y8/6.jpg

- For example, some representatives of the Pskov and Tver regions (former principalities not represented in the previous version) as well as the Smolensk/Smaland region announced the birth of the "East Kryvy Platform", a grouping created with the aim of "integrating the peoples of the Great Baltic" and leaning "towards the East European variant of the Euro-Atlantic path, which implies the preservation of the identity and cultural and demographic foundations of countries and peoples."4

- In the new version of the map, the Caucasian republics of Ingushetia, Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria also gain space and specific borders. According to their own authors, this matrix map is open to potentially infinite variations. As long as they serve a single purpose: to imagine "strategies for a controlled, constructive, and nonviolent dismantling of the last colonial empire in Europe."5

UKRAINE'S VISION OF THE DIVISION

- Russian separatists and their Euro-Atlantic mouthpieces are not the only ones engaged in such mapping exercises. On a wall in the office of Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, photographed by journalists during an interview, is the color map 6 b. Drawn in felt-tip pen, Kiev's imagined dividing lines of Russia contest and replace the current federal borders: Japan (Япония) gets the disputed Kuril Islands, Germany (ФРГ) Kaliningrad (Königsberg), Finland (Ф) Karelia, and part of the Russian northwest. China (Китай, to which the letter К corresponds) includes all of Siberia and the Far East.

https://i.postimg.cc/tgmbc14W/6b.jpg

- In the central part of the current Federation, a "Central Asian Republic" should then be born, under the name of ЦАР (Car). Russia proper, decapitated from its eastern head, is left with the territory marked by the letters РФ (RF). In correspondence with the Caucasus, we read "Ičkerija," the name of the Chechen separatist republic proclaimed in 1991, as well as the territory that the Ukrainian parliament recently recognized as "temporarily occupied" by the Russians,6 which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had already done for the Kuril Islands.7 The territory of the Caucasus is marked with the letters "Ičkerija," which is the name of the Chechen separatist republic proclaimed in 1991. Most importantly, the Ukrainian borders include not only Donbass and Crimea, but also the Kursk, Belgorod and Kuban regions. Budanov was asked whether the map represented Kiev's plans for territorial expansion once the 1991 borders were restored. His answer was cryptic: "Everyone sees what they want to see. Perhaps it is a rough indicator. Or maybe not."8,9

- If the first map divides the body of the Russian Federation along ethnic lines and according to the "indigenous" criterion of historical rights, the second is reminiscent of the projects for the partition of Eurasia into spheres of influence elaborated by a certain strategic current of the American apparatus.10 The first map is a map of the Russian Federation, which is not a map of the Soviet Union. Americans, Poles, Ukrainians and ethnic separatists imagine different geometries of disintegration, depending on their respective geopolitical projections.

But what is most important to note, apart from the plausibility of the scenarios that are envisaged, is precisely the dissemination and growing resonance of such maps, a sign of the recovery of the geographical dimension in the grammar of the powers that be. This return of geographical concerns perhaps also sanctions the obsolescence of the thesis of the end of history.

References/further reading:

0-Link to the original image of the two maps (https://cdn.gelestatic.it/limesonline/www/2023/02/6_coriandoli_russia_edito0123.jpg)
1- A. Fotyga, "The dissolution of the Russian Federation is far less dangerous than leaving it ruled by criminals," Euractiv, 27/1/2023.
2- Read also: « Russie-Turquie, un défi à l’Occident ? » (Russia - Turkey, a challenge to the West?)
3- V. Nikiforova, "V SŠA obnarodovan plan razrušenija Rossii" ("In the United States was made public the plan to destroy Russia"), Ria Novosti, 9/16/2022; V. Kornilov, "It's time to abandon our illusions, the West is waging a war to destroy Russia," RT, 9/20/2022
4- Vostočno-Krivskaja Platforma, 16/1/2023, http://bit.ly/3DmRKDO.
5- From the Forum's Telegram channel, http://t.me/freenationsrussia.
6- "Ukrainian parliament declares 'Chechen Republic of Ichkeria' Russian-occupied territory," Meduza, 10/18/2022.
7- "Ukraine declares Kuril Islands Russian occupied territory", Meduza, 7/10/2022.
8- "Interv'ju - Kyrylo Budanov: Naši podrazdelenija zajdut v Krym s oružiem v rukakh" ("Interview with Kyrylo Budanov: Our units will enter Crimea armed"), http://liga.net, 26/12/2022.
9- Read also: Russia becoming a diplomatic Gordian knot for China (https://eurasianet.org/russia-becoming-a-diplomatic-gordian-knot-for-china)
10- See for example Z. Brzezinski, "A Geostrategy for Eurasia", Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 5, 1997.

Bruce G Charlton

16th May 2023, 17:37

I would again like to thank Ravenlocke and Bill for bringing so much to attention on vital emerging news items, about which there is literally zero coverage in the UK media (until, maybe, after media bosses have received instructions on what 'line' to take, on how to filter and invert the narratives).

I so seldom use mainstream media, that I keep forgetting how truly vast is the gulf between what really happens and is important, and what they are propagandizing about.

And this despite that I actually wrote a book about the psychological aspects of the mass media, published a decade ago, and also available free online:

https://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.com/ (https://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.com/)

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 18:24

https://twitter.com/TheIntlMagz/status/1658163968178003969

1658163968178003969

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 18:58

https://twitter.com/Hawkeye1745/status/1658516859740643331

1658516859740643331

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 19:04

https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1658519909859577858

1658519909859577858

Article here,

https://eisenhowermedianetwork.org/russia-ukraine-war-peace/

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 19:07

https://twitter.com/Daark_web/status/1658543990206083072

1658543990206083072

Text:
🇷🇺🇺🇦🇺🇲❗One of the US MIM-104 Patriot air defense systems was probably damaged in a Russian nighttime missile attack on Kiev - CNN.

The American TV channel CNN reports this with reference to an unnamed representative of the US administration. The source said the US is still assessing the extent of the damage to determine whether the air defense system needs to be completely disabled or whether the Ukrainians will repair it on the spot.

IntelSlavaZ

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658532095168327680

1658532095168327680

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 20:11

Text:
Czech banks close accounts for Russians and Belarusians without warning.

It is reported that at the moment, two banks - Creditas and UniCredit Bank - have confirmed that they are canceling the accounts of Russian and Belarusian citizens. In addition, ČSOB clients also report similar practices.

https://twitter.com/dana916/status/1658554870100639746

1658554870100639746

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 20:16

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1658560043871092736

1658560043871092736

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1658560199286837254

1658560199286837254

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1658560428669128713

1658560428669128713

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1658560658923835411

1658560658923835411

https://twitter.com/johnnyjmils/status/1658560845322899463

1658560845322899463

Ravenlocke

16th May 2023, 20:28

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1658556178480103426

1658556178480103426

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Text:
Another turbulent evening in Ukraine:

• Konstantinovka - explosions (enemy rear behind Bakhmut)
• Slavyansk - explosions (enemy behind Bakhmut)
• Kharkov region - explosions (there were reports of the accumulation of the enemy and equipment)
• Zaporozhye region - "Gerani" (the enemy is ready to attack, concentrated forces)
• Kherson region, Kherson Berislav explosions (constant accumulation of the enemy and sending small landing groups to our shore).

https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1658553786556731403

1658553786556731403

arwen

17th May 2023, 03:53

Putin and Zelensky 'agree to meet African leaders to discuss peace plan' (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12090289/Putin-Zelensky-agree-meet-African-leaders-discuss-peace-plan.html)

Cyril Ramaphosa spoke with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts by phone
They agreed to host 'an African leaders' peace mission' in Moscow and Kyiv

By CHRIS JEWERS and AFP

PUBLISHED: 11:11 EDT, 16 May 2023 | UPDATED: 12:21 EDT, 16 May 2023

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/05/16/16/71051041-12090289-image-a-1_1684250055529.jpg

Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky have both agreed to separate meetings with a delegation of African heads of state to discuss a possible plan to end the war in Ukraine, according to South Africa's president.

Cyril Ramaphosa spoke with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts by phone over the weekend, a spokesperson for his office said. They agreed to host 'an African leaders' peace mission' in Moscow and Kyiv respectively.

The leaders of Zambia, Senegal, Congo, Uganda and Egypt plan to join Mr Ramaphosa on the mission, the president said. He added that Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky gave him the go-ahead to 'commence the preparations'.

No details were provided on the possible parameters of the talks. Mr Zelensky has previously said he would not consider a peace deal to end the 15-month war until Russian forces withdraw fully from Ukrainian territory.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres was briefed on the African delegation's planned meetings and 'welcomed the initiative', Mr Ramaphosa said.

Of the leaders due to meet with Mr Ramaphosa, Zambia and Congo lean to support the west. Senegal and Uganda are more Russia-leaning. Egypt has sought a balanced position on the conflict.

'I agreed with both President Putin and President Zelensky to commence with preparations for engagements with the African heads of state,' the South African leader said, speaking at a press conference in Cape Town during a state visit by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

'We're hoping we will have intensive discussions.'

He did not give a specific timeline for the visit or other details, saying only that the conflict had been 'devastating' and Africa 'is also suffering a great deal' from it.

African countries have been badly hit by rising prices of grain and by the impact to world trade attributed to the war.

Ramaphosa said the African leaders have been talking and consulting in recent months on how the continent can facilitate the end of the war.

'This we have been talking about as African leaders, because we concluded that conflict in that part of the world, that much as it does not affect Africa directly in the form of deaths and destruction to our infrastructure, it does have an impact on the lives of many Africans with regards to food security. Prices of fertiliser, cereals and fuel have gone up,' he said.

'Facilitated by the Brazzaville Foundation, we have been able to have these discussions, and principal to our discussions are efforts towards a peaceful resolution to the devastating conflict in the Ukraine, its cost in human lives and the impact on the African continent.'

Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year but the war has largely stalemated, although Ukraine is expected to start a counteroffensive soon to try to take back land occupied by Russia and push Putin's forces back east.

Considered one of Moscow's closest allies on the continent, South Africa says it is impartial and has abstained from voting on U.N. resolutions on the war.

The announcement came a day after Ramaphosa said South Africa had been under 'extraordinary pressure' to pick sides in the conflict.

This followed accusations from the United States that Pretoria supplied weapons to Moscow - a move that would break with its professed neutrality.

The peace mission will be the latest in a flurry of so-far unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to still the war.

A Chinese special envoy was expected to arrive in Kyiv for a two-day visit on Tuesday to promote Beijing-led peace negotiations.

Last week Guterres told a Spanish newspaper that peace negotiations were 'not possible at this moment' with both sides 'convinced that they can win.'

But Ramaphosa said the African initiative had met with 'cautious support' in Washington and a number of European capitals visited by 'facilitators' tasked with presenting the plan.

The effort could help Pretoria rehabilitate its image as a neutral player and mediator, following accusations that it has drifted towards Russia.

The commander of South Africa's ground forces was in Moscow to discuss military cooperation on Monday, in the latest of a series of incidents that critics cite as evidence of a tilt towards the Kremlin.

Last week, the US envoy to Pretoria said that the United States believed weapons and ammunition had been laden onto a Russian freighter that docked at a Cape Town naval base in December.

On Tuesday, South Africa's defence minister, Thandi Modise, denied the accusation in an interview with local newspaper the Mail & Guardian.

'Everybody now sees the spook called South Africa. I can tell you that categorically, we did not send fokol, not even a piece of Chappies to Russia,' she said referring to a local popular bubble-gum brand and using an Afrikaans expletive meaning 'nothing at all'.

On Monday, Ramaphosa said South Africa would not be drawn 'into a contest between global powers' despite having faced 'extraordinary pressure' to do so.

South Africa has refused to condemn the conflict in Ukraine, which has largely isolated Moscow on the international stage, saying it wants to stay neutral.

In a veiled criticism of that stance on Tuesday, Singapore's Lee said condemning Russia's invasion was a matter of principle.

'One country cannot invade another with impunity...a clear disapproval has to be given,' he told the press conference in Cape Town, flanked by Ramaphosa.

'We remain friends with Russia but we cannot approve of what has been done'.

Tintin

17th May 2023, 08:26

“Zelensky is telling us that if you want to win the war you’ve got to give me more money and more stuff. He tells us, ‘I’ve got to pay off the generals.’ He’s telling us”—if he is forced out of office—“he’s going to the highest bidder. He’d rather go to Italy than stay and possibly get killed by his own people.”

----------------

Seymour Hersh: The Ukraine Refugee Question
Source: The Wall Will Fall (https://thewallwillfall.org/2023/05/17/seymour-hersh-the-ukraine-refugee-question/) (Vanessa Beeley's website copied from Sy Hersh's Substack (https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-refugee-question?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1377040&post_id=121590578&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email&nthPub=671))
Publication date: May 17th 2023

Last Saturday the Washington Post published an exposé of classified American intelligence documents showing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, working behind the back of the Biden White House, pushed hard earlier this year for an expanded series of missile attacks inside Russia.

The documents were part of a large cache of classified materials posted online by an Air Force enlisted man now in custody. A senior official of the Biden administration, asked by the Post for comment on the newly revealed intelligence, said that Zelensky has never violated his pledge never to use American weapons to strike inside Russia. In the view of the White House, Zelensky can do no wrong.

Zelensky’s desire to take the war to Russia may not be clear to the president and senior foreign policy aides in the White House, but it is to those in the American intelligence community who have found it difficult to get their intelligence and their assessments a hearing in the Oval Office.

Meanwhile, the slaughter in the city of Bakhmut continues. It is similar in idiocy, if not in numbers, to the slaughter in Verdun and the Somme during World War I. The men in charge of today’s war—in Moscow, Kiev, and Washington—have shown no interest even in temporary ceasefire talks that could serve as a prelude to something permanent. The talk now is only about the possibilities of a late spring or summer offensive by either party.

But something else is cooking, as some in the American intelligence community know and have reported in secret, at the instigation of government officials at various levels in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia. These countries are all allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin.

This group is led by Poland, whose leadership no longer fears the Russian army because its performance in Ukraine has left the glow of its success at Stalingrad during the Second World War in tatters. It has been quietly urging Zelensky to find a way to end the war—even by resigning himself, if necessary—and to allow the process of rebuilding his nation to get under way. Zelensky is not budging, according to intercepts and other data known inside the Central Intelligence Agency, but he is beginning to lose the private support of his neighbors.

One of the driving forces for the quiet European talks with Zelensky has been the more than five million Ukrainians fleeing from the war who have crossed the country’s borders and have registered with its neighbors under an EU agreement for temporary protection that includes residency rights, access to the labor market, housing, social welfare assistance, and medical care.

An assessment published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the estimate excludes roughly 3 million Ukrainian refugees who escaped from the war zone without a visa into any of the 27 European nations that have abolished border control between each other under the Schengen agreement. Ukraine, though not in the EU, now enjoys all the benefits of the Schengen pact.

A few nations, exhausted by the 15-month war, have reintroduced some forms of border control, but the regional refugee crisis will not be resolved until there is a formal peace agreement.

The UNHRC reports that free travel from Ukraine into the Baltic states and EU states in Western Europe “makes it particularly difficult to determine exactly how many Ukrainians have reached the EU in the last few months, and where they are now.”

The report says the “vast majority” of the Ukrainian refugees are women and children, and one third of them are under the age of eighteen. Seventy-three per cent of the refugees of working age are women, many with children.

A February analysis of the European refugee issue by the Council on Foreign Relations found that “tens of billions of dollars” in humanitarian aid were poured into Ukraine’s neighbors during the war’s first year. “As the conflict enters its second year with no end in sight,” the report says, “experts worry that host countries are growing fatigued.”

Weeks ago I learned that the American intelligence community was aware that some officials in Western Europe and the Baltic states want the war between Ukraine and Russia to end.

These officials have concluded that it is time for Zelensky to “come around” and seek a settlement.

A knowledgeable American official told me that some in the leadership in Hungary and Poland were among those working together to get Ukraine involved in serious talks with Moscow. “Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the American official said.

The European leaders have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got”—a villa in Italy and interests in offshore bank accounts—“if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”

So far, the official said, Zelensky has rejected such advice and ignored offers of large sums of money to ease his retreat to an estate he owns in Italy. There is no support in the Biden Administration for any settlement that involves Zelensky’s departure, and the leadership in France and England “are too beholden” to Biden to contemplate such a scenario.

There is a reality that some elements in the American intelligence community can’t ignore, the official said, even if the White House is ignoring it: “Ukraine is running out of money and it is known that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.”

The issue for them, the official told me, “is how to get the United States to stop supporting Zelensky,” The White House support goes beyond the needs of the war:

“We are paying all of the retirement funds—the 401k’s—for Ukraine."

And Zelensky wants more, the official said.

“Zelensky is telling us that if you want to win the war you’ve got to give me more money and more stuff. He tells us, ‘I’ve got to pay off the generals.’ He’s telling us”—if he is forced out of office—“he’s going to the highest bidder. He’d rather go to Italy than stay and possibly get killed by his own people.”

“All of this talk is being reported and is now flying around inside the American intelligence community, but, as usual,” the official said, “it’s not clear to the intelligence community what the president and his foreign policy aides in the White House know of the reality” of the European discussion about finding a way to end the war.

“We are still training Ukrainians how to fly our F-16s that will be shot down by Russia as soon as they get into the war zone."

The mainstream press is dedicated to Biden and the war and Biden is still talking about the Great Satan in Moscow while the Russian economy is doing great. Putin can stay where he is”—in power—“despite his failure to wipe Ukraine off the map as an independent state. And he thought he would win the war with just one airborne division”—a sardonic reference to Russia’s failed effort in the first days of the war to seize a vital airport by parachuting in an attack force.

“Europe’s problem,” the official said, in terms of getting a quick settlement to the war, “is that the White House wants Zelensky to survive while there are others”—in Russia and in some European capitals—“who say Zelensky has got to go, no matter what,”

It’s not clear that this understanding has gotten to the Oval Office. I have been told that some of the better intelligence about the war does not reach the president, through no fault of those who prepare the often contrary assessments.

Biden is said to rely on briefings and other materials prepared by Avril Haines, director of National Intelligence, since the Biden Administration came into office. She has spent much of her career working for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, whose ties to Biden and agreement with him on matters pertaining to Russia and China go back decades.

The one saving grace for some in the community, I have been told, has been CIA Director William Burns. Burns was ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of State and is seen as someone “who has come around” in opposition to some of the White House’s foreign policy follies. “He doesn’t want to be a rat on a sinking ship,” the official told me.

On the other hand, I have been told, it’s not clear to those in the CIA who prepare the President’s Daily Brief that Joe Biden is a regular reader of their intelligence summary. The document is usually three pages.

Decades ago I was told—by someone who begged me not to write about it at the time—that Ronald Reagan rarely read the PDB until Colin Powell, then in the White House, began reading it to a video recorder. The tape would then be played for the president.

It’s unclear who, if anyone, might take the initiative as Biden’s Colin Powell.