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The outraged chorus in the West after the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems distant, though that intoxicating rush of moral adrenaline happened less than five months ago. Now there is a hangover that is turning into panic about what we have done to ourselves and the inevitable consequences, writes Donald Forbes .
- Nato’s Ukraine Crusade Hits The Buffers Of Reality
NATO, led by Joe Biden, has committed the classic blunder of taking sides in a war on the assumption that it will be won, without having an exit strategy in case it is lost. The war in Ukraine was fought out of Washington almost as if it were a video game rather than a human tragedy.
If the war was about keeping Ukraine intact, giving Vladimir Putin a nosebleed and neutralizing Russia, it has been visibly lost to anyone not cheering on behalf of a NATO government. They are all becoming increasingly desperate about the uncontrollability of what they have gotten themselves into.
Sanctions against Russia have flared up around the world, which, in part due to the unforeseen effects of the war, is sliding into a politically charged economic recession. Regime change in Moscow and Putin's trial for war crimes, which were never really more than Bidensgebazel, will never be heard from again.
Worse, analysts fear that the war has marked a turning point in the West's attempts to maintain its supposedly universalist liberal world order against its ideological enemies: Russia, which is fighting for its superpower status, and China, which is its diplomatic and economic tentacles. across the world and deep into US institutions.
There is a painful standoff between Ukraine and its Western allies. President Zelensky wants NATO to win the war for him. That cannot and will not happen because of the risks associated with crossing the border against a nuclear superpower. Zelensky's undeniable qualities as a cunning manipulator have met the buffers of geopolitical reality.
All of this is clear to the Western public, disillusioned with the ineptitude of its leaders, weighed down by inflation and fear of the coming energy shortage, which it knows will be worse than the skyrocketing fuel prices it already has to contend with. .
Europe is now shivering, but autumn and winter, when the energy crisis will erupt in full force, are only a few weeks away. For the common man, the question is how he will keep warm under the sanctions against Russia, which have turned out to be disastrous. Can economies and jobs be preserved or are we back to something like the Covid regime from which we have barely recovered?
Britain's three-day week and ongoing power cuts happened 50 years ago, but are an example of what awaits Europeans, who depend on Russia's irreplaceable oil and gas exports to keep the lights on. Putin could turn it off at any moment.
Taken together, the aftermath of Covid, the fallout from the war in Ukraine, the looming recession and the advent of insane Net Zero dictates are having a real impact – unprecedented outside of wartime – on ordinary citizens and the industries that supply them. The ingredients are there for a toxic political future that widens the gap between politicians and their voters. It is already happening in the Netherlands, which is usually known for its gentleness, as Kathy Gyngell reported here .
Alex Munton of the Rapidan Energy Group calls it "the most extreme energy crisis to ever hit Europe", meaning he thinks it's worse than the oil shocks inflicted on Opec in the 1970s. European natural gas prices have risen ten times more than those in the US.
"That's an extraordinarily high price to pay for natural gas and there really is no way out," Munton told Foreign Policy magazine. Only Putin has the gas we need.
No wonder Europeans, weary from a distant war of which they hear conflicting reports, are wondering whether the struggle for Ukraine and its unspoken sideline – the humiliation of Russia by the Biden government – is worth the short-term price, let alone the long-term price.
NATO leaders will never openly admit that they have gone too far. But the sanctions are expediently betrayed in the West that imposed them. Canada lifted a corner of the sanctions regime to return to Germany a turbine it repaired and which is needed to pump Russian gas through the Nordstream2 pipeline to Germany.
This was against the rules, but green-obsessed Germany gets 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia and is feverishly recommissioning coal mines for the winter's cramp when its renewable energies are not used.
Zelensky and the media have bragged about the Ukrainian military's performance against the Russians, making the fight seem worth while, which seems to be less and less true. The Ukrainians have been engaged in rearguard action since day one and large parts of eastern and coastal Ukraine have been lost.
A report from Ukraine from the US Modern War Institute speaks of untrained soldiers desperately trying to stem the Russian advance. According to the report, the evidence on the ground tells “a story that contradicts the relentless optimism that has permeated Ukraine's depiction of the war from the outset. After four months of grueling work, the Ukrainian army is faced with a shortage of manpower.”
At what point does Zelensky, who bombards Washington with demands for money and weapons, admits that he is fighting a lost cause that Americans only half support, and then only in hopes that Putin can somehow overcome the setback that they wish him? Meanwhile, support for the war is ebbing in Congress, which approves the spending.
Catastrophic Ukrainian losses don't matter to Kiev, Brussels, London or Washington
Arta Moeini of Peace and Democracy asks, "What explains America's hyper-ideological response to the Ukraine crisis?"The defense of Ukraine has become the latest holy war for a generation of elites who have largely come of age during the Cold War, a generation that has internalized the evangelical binaries and symbolic crusades of that era and is always looking for the next apocalyptic event to to demonstrate her virtue. For them, Russia's victory would effectively destroy the so-called liberal international order, whose rules Washington and its North Atlantic allies set in the wake of World War II. As a result, it is the West that risks decredibilization in Ukraine, he writes.Putin made a mistake if he thought he could walk all over Ukraine. Biden made one with far greater consequences, starting a proxy war knowing Putin had his finger on the power button for energy, which could ultimately be more decisive than his nuclear arsenal.
- article (Dutch 🇳🇱 + Multi-Language Options). 🦜🦋🌳
Quote:
Posted by Bill Ryan
That's quite something to see. But I didn't fully understand it. The tweet saidQuote:
Posted by Ravenlocke
New Kakhovka (Kherson region) right now. UA again struck from the Himars MLRS at ammunition depots, on the video you can hear how the shells detonateIs that UA striking Russia using the Himars, or Russia striking and destroying the Himars which are in UA ammo depots? (I'm presuming the latter, but I'd like to be sure.)
Now that I see we simply must commit the great-grandchildren's future, and more money than they can possibly make, to cover the U. S. with radars and weapons because people are afraid to live, I like to keep tabs on our 60s to 90s gear as it loses everything.
So far I have only counted two HIMARS wrecked. Here goes another guided system thing--I am not sure how many you lose when you sacrifice a whole howitzer platoon:
"The following targets were destroyed in counter-battery fire: a battery of multiple launch rocket systems near Slavyansk, a platoon of multiple rocket launchers in the area of Nikolayevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic, and also an artillery platoon of US-made M777 howitzers at firing positions in the settlement of Pervomaisky in the Kharkov Region," the spokesman said.
Good, good...no, everything we want does not get done in one day, but Italian PM Draghi went away. Also there is some Zionist noise about Iran's nuclear weapons, while the fossil is displayed at various museums around the Middle East. Promotion of irrelevancy?
Fans of math can still try to figure out how the U. S. gets out of debt, infinitely grows, or technologically and industrially "catches up" to larger countries that have smoked it, or even less-populated ones that work better. If so we can name a theorem for you!
The Saker is running again, after what was called a "large and sophisticated" DDoS. A few comments there suggest the new Spetznatz target is going to be stuff like this:
"More than 1,000 artillery rounds for US-made M777 howitzers were destroyed in Slavyansk with high-precision ground-launched weapons, three hangars with these howitzers, which were used to shell residential areas of Donetsk, were destroyed in the area of Konstantinovka and Chasov Yar. In the Odessa Region, several Harpoon coastal missile systems, which were delivered from the UK, were destroyed. In the area of the village of Malotaranovka in the DPR, high-precision air-launched missiles disabled two HIMARS MLRS units and two depots of ammunition for them," the official said.
From what we can tell, most of the HIMARS is deeply embedded far from the front lines...well of course, it has better range than most of the other stuff, so they will hold it back just close enough to affect densely populated non-combat areas. On the other hand, the Harpoons are really dangerous if one was to try to go near Odessa. So those are kind of important.
Evidently "lend-lease" has been put on the backburner because Ukraine will not have to repay the two kinds of military assistance from America right now. Oh, America just asked its citizens to leave that country...what does that tell us?
If you are not American, the message seems to be "maximum casualties". Why else would Ukraine pour reinforcements into a battle they can't win, instead of regrouping in the west where they might be stronger?
EU member Mick Wallace is telling the truth about NATO: it's no longer a defensive alliance, it's a war machine.
Source: https://www.bitchute.com/video/AQAYT3xZiMB1
Would like to know about EU's response to Mick Wallace's question. Does anyone here know?
https://thecradle.co/Article/Columns/13087
In Eurasia, the War of Economic Corridors is in full swing
By Pepe Escobar
July 15 2022
The War of Economic Corridors is now proceeding full speed ahead, with the game-changing first cargo flow of goods from Russia to India via the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) already in effect.
Very few, both in the east and west, are aware of how this actually has long been in the making: the Russia-Iran-India agreement for implementing a shorter and cheaper Eurasian trade route via the Caspian Sea (compared to the Suez Canal), was first signed in 2000, in the pre-9/11 era.
The INSTC in full operational mode signals a powerful hallmark of Eurasian integration – alongside the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and last but not least, what I described as “Pipelineistan” two decades ago.
Caspian is key
Let’s have a first look on how these vectors are interacting.
The genesis of the current acceleration lies in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan’s capital, for the 6th Caspian Summit. This event not only brought the evolving Russia-Iran strategic partnership to a deeper level, but crucially, all five Caspian Sea littoral states agreed that no NATO warships or bases will be allowed on site.
That essentially configures the Caspian as a virtual Russian lake, and in a minor sense, Iranian – without compromising the interests of the three “stans,” Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For all practical purposes, Moscow has tightened its grip on Central Asia a notch.
As the Caspian Sea is connected to the Black Sea by canals off the Volga built by the former USSR, Moscow can always count on a reserve navy of small vessels – invariably equipped with powerful missiles – that may be transferred to the Black Sea in no time if necessary.
Stronger trade and financial links with Iran now proceed in tandem with binding the three “stans” to the Russian matrix. Gas-rich republic Turkmenistan for its part has been historically idiosyncratic – apart from committing most of its exports to China.
Under an arguably more pragmatic young new leader, President Serdar Berdimuhamedow, Ashgabat may eventually opt to become a member of the SCO and/or the EAEU.
Caspian littoral state Azerbaijan on the other hand presents a complex case: an oil and gas producer eyed by the European Union (EU) to become an alternative energy supplier to Russia – although this is not happening anytime soon.
The West Asia connection
Iran’s foreign policy under President Ebrahim Raisi is clearly on a Eurasian and Global South trajectory. Tehran will be formally incorporated into the SCO as a full member in the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September, while its formal application to join the BRICS has been filed.
Purnima Anand, head of the BRICS International Forum, has stated that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also very much keen on joining BRICS. Should that happen, by 2024 we could be on our way to a powerful West Asia, North Africa hub firmly installed inside one of the key institutions of the multipolar world.
As Putin heads to Tehran next week for trilateral Russia, Iran, Turkey talks, ostensibly about Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is bound to bring up the subject of BRICS.
Tehran is operating on two parallel vectors. In the event the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is revived – a quite dim possibility as it stands, considering the latest shenanigans in Vienna and Doha – that would represent a tactical victory. Yet moving towards Eurasia is on a whole new strategic level.
In the INSTC framework, Iran will make maximum good use of the geostrategically crucial port of Bandar Abbas – straddling the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent.
Yet as much as it may be portrayed as a major diplomatic victory, it’s clear that Tehran will not be able to make full use of BRICS membership if western – especially US – sanctions are not totally lifted.
Pipelines and the “stans”
A compelling argument can be made that Russia and China might eventually fill the western technology void in the Iranian development process. But there’s a lot more that platforms such as the INSTC, the EAEU and even BRICS can accomplish.
Across “Pipelineistan,” the War of Economic Corridors gets even more complex. Western propaganda simply cannot admit that Azerbaijan, Algeria, Libya, Russia’s allies at OPEC, and even Kazakhstan are not exactly keen on increasing their oil production to help Europe.
Kazakhstan is a tricky case: it is the largest oil producer in Central Asia and set to be a major natural gas supplier, right after Russia and Turkmenistan. More than 250 oil and gas fields are operated in Kazakhstan by 104 companies, including western energy giants such as Chevron, Total, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.
While exports of oil, natural gas and petroleum products comprise 57 percent of Kazakhstan’s exports, natural gas is responsible for 85 percent of Turkmenistan’s budget (with 80 percent of exports committed to China). Interestingly, Galkynysh is the second largest gas field on the planet.
Compared to the other “stans,” Azerbaijan is a relatively minor producer (despite oil accounting for 86 percent of its total exports) and basically a transit nation. Baku’s super-wealth aspirations center on the Southern Gas Corridor, which includes no less than three pipelines: Baku-Tblisi-Erzurum (BTE); the Turkish-driven Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP); and the Trans-Adriatic (TAP).
The problem with this acronym festival – BTE, TANAP, TAP – is that they all need massive foreign investment to increase capacity, which the EU sorely lacks because every single euro is committed by unelected Brussels Eurocrats to “support” the black hole that is Ukraine. The same financial woes apply to a possible Trans-Caspian Pipeline which would further link to both TANAP and TAP.
In the War of Economic Corridors – the “Pipelineistan” chapter – a crucial aspect is that most Kazakh oil exports to the EU go through Russia, via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). As an alternative, the Europeans are mulling on a still fuzzy Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, also known as the Middle Corridor (Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey). They actively discussed it in Brussels last month.
The bottom line is that Russia remains in full control of the Eurasia pipeline chessboard (and we’re not even talking about the Gazprom-operated pipelines Power of Siberia 1 and 2 leading to China).
Gazprom executives know all too well that a fast increase of energy exports to the EU is out of the question. They also factor the Tehran Convention – that helps prevent and control pollution and maintain the environmental integrity of the Caspian Sea, signed by all five littoral members.
Breaking BRI in Russia
China, for its part, is confident that one of its prime strategic nightmares may eventually disappear. The notorious “escape from Malacca” is bound to materialize, in cooperation with Russia, via the Northern Sea Route, which will shorten the trade and connectivity corridor from East Asia to Northern Europe from 11,200 nautical miles to only 6,500 nautical miles. Call it the polar twin of the INSTC.
This also explains why Russia has been busy building a vast array of state-of-the-art icebreakers.
So here we have an interconnection of New Silk Roads (the INSTC proceeds in parallel with BRI and the EAEU), Pipelineistan, and the Northern Sea Route on the way to turn western trade domination completely upside down.
Of course, the Chinese have had it planned for quite a while. The first White Paper on China’s Arctic policy, in January 2018, already showed how Beijing is aiming, “jointly with other states” (that means Russia), to implement sea trade routes in the Arctic within the framework of the Polar Silk Road.
And like clockwork, Putin subsequently confirmed that the Northern Sea Route should interact and complement the Chinese Maritime Silk Road.
Russia-China Economic cooperation is evolving on so many complex, convergent levels that just to keep track of it all is a dizzying experience.
A more detailed analysis will reveal some of the finer points, for instance how BRI and SCO interact, and how BRI projects will have to adapt to the heady consequences of Moscow’s Operation Z in Ukraine, with more emphasis being placed on developing Central and West Asian corridors.
It’s always crucial to consider that one of Washington’s key strategic objectives in the relentless hybrid war against Russia was always to break BRI corridors that crisscross Russian territory.
As it stands, it’s important to realize that dozens of BRI projects in industry and investment and cross-border inter-regional cooperation will end up consolidating the Russian concept of the Greater Eurasia Partnership – which essentially revolves around establishing multilateral cooperation with a vast range of nations belonging to organizations such as the EAEU, the SCO, BRICS and ASEAN.
Welcome to the new Eurasian mantra: Make Economic Corridors, Not War.
Hungary has ‘military plans’ for Ukraine – minister
Budapest needs to protect ethnic Hungarians living in the western part of the bordering country, FM Peter Szijjarto has said
Hungary has military plans on how to protect ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has revealed. Budapest is ready to act in defense of 150,000 people it considers its own, he revealed in an interview on Friday.
“Our country has prepared emergency war scenarios,” the minister told Index news website. He said the Hungarian government wanted to avoid using them, which is why it sought a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, rejected the idea of offering concessions to Russia to secure a ceasefire, and claims his country can defeat Russia with the help of Western backers. The Hungarian foreign minister commented on the two countries’ objectives, saying his country has different interests than Ukraine.
“And what is the Ukrainian interest? To involve as many countries as possible in this conflict, at least through arms shipments. Our interest on the other hand is to stay out of this conflict and minimize the risk of getting dragged into a war,” Szijjarto said.
Szijjarto claimed that after Russia attacked Ukraine, Budapest “closed all the issues” that had caused tensions with Kiev before.
Kiev has long accused Budapest of encouraging secessionism among its Hungarian diaspora, including by allegedly secretly giving citizenship to ethnic Hungarians. In 2018, Kiev kicked out the Hungarian consul in the town of Beregovo over the issue. The mission’s staff was previously filmed apparently handing out citizenship paperwork to Ukrainian Hungarians and instructing them to keep it a secret.
Relations between the two nations took a turn for the worse in 2017, after Kiev adopted a law which set out a roadmap for removing minority languages from Ukrainian schools. Budapest said it was discriminatory against ethnic Hungarians and pledged to stand in the way of Ukraine’s plans to join NATO and the EU unless the law is scrapped.
Despite Szijjarto’s assessment that the tensions are in the past, his country has received harsh criticism from Kiev in recent months. In May, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk accused Budapest of cozying up to Russia for its “cheap gas,” and secretly wishing to seize the Hungarian-majority parts of Ukraine.
https://www.rt.com/news/559046-hunga...ilitary-plans/
RT visits neo-Nazi torture dungeon in Ukraine (VIDEO)
Set up at a local school, the base had been used by the Tornado battalion for mass torture, rape and murder
RT’s Murad Gazdiev has visited the former base of the notorious but now disbanded Ukrainian neo-Nazi Tornado battalion. It is located in the village of Privolye near the Lugansk People's Republic city of Lisichansk, which was recently liberated by Russian and allied forces.
The Tornado battalion was formed in 2014 from the remnants of another volunteer unit called Shakhtersk. Despite the unit’s designation as a volunteer police battalion, it was led by a career criminal named Ruslan Onishchenko and the core of the group also consisted of ex-cons.
Tornado was disbanded in 2015 after it faced an array of allegations of kidnapping, rape, torture and unlawful killings. The ‘policemen’ committed many of their grisly deeds at their headquarters, which had been set up in a local school. While the battalion is long gone, the memory of its actions lives on among the locals.
Tornado fighters routinely grabbed people in the streets while searching for ‘separatists’ and inquiring why villagers were not in the army, a local man recalls. He showed the RT crew a dark room with no windows in the school’s basement, which was said to be the torture dungeon of Tornado.
“People came out with bruises, beaten, and some were not found at all. My friend’s son disappeared, he still has not been found,” the man said, adding that some 5-6 people from his village alone vanished without a trace after their ‘stay’ at the battalion’s headquarters.
The exact number of Tornado’s victims remains unknown – locals are still searching for their graves. “They were doing something in the basements, they were walking around dressed like Nazis, they were shooting at the cemetery, they had a shooting range there. People disappeared, we’ve dug up everything around there – no one knows where they have gone,” a local woman said.
Onishchenko was sentenced to 11 years in prison for kidnapping and torture back in 2015. Several of his associates also received jail terms for kidnapping, torture, rape, and looting.
However, shortly after Moscow launched its large-scale operation against Ukraine in late February, Kiev began releasing inmates who wanted to serve on the frontline – regardless of the seriousness of their crimes. Onishchenko was turned loose earlier this week, despite not having served his term in full, and as he awaited a new trial for his alleged involvement in a 2018 prison riot. Moreover, nearly all of the jailed fighters with the notorious battalion are now said to have been set free.
According to the Ukrainian media, Onishchenko’s original sentence had been commuted in accordance with a 2015 law that says one day spent in pre-trial detention counts as two days in jail. However, the former commander had remained behind bars while awaiting trial for the prison riot.
“Nearly all of the battalion’s members are now back on the frontline, fighting in various units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Viktor Pandzhakidze, the ex-spokesman for Tornado, told Ukrainian media.
https://www.rt.com/russia/558992-ukr...rture-chamber/
VIDEO shows fierce battle for Antonov Airport in Ukraine
RT reporter has posted live-action footage showing the battle for Antonov Airport outside Kiev in February
Live-action footage from the battle for the airfield outside Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev was posted online by RT Russian reporter Valentin Gorshenin on Thursday.
The video, incorporating footage from the body cams of soldiers and imagery captured by drones, unveils previously unseen episodes of the battle for Antonov International Airport, located near the town of Hostomel, which occurred in the early days of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
In the footage, soldiers are seen preparing for a helicopter assault at a staging area at an airfield in Belarus. The troops are then shown disembarking from helicopters and securing the Antonov airfield and multiple buildings at a military installation nearby. Attack and transport helicopters are shown providing support to the troops and hitting ground targets. The airborne troops are ultimately reached by the land forces seen pouring into the airfield en masse.
Fighting at the airport resulted in the destruction of the world’s largest cargo aircraft, the Antonov An-225 Mriya, which was stationed there. Developed in the late 1980s, the Soviet-built behemoth was inherited by Ukraine and used for cargo deliveries. The carcass of the plane was captured on film by a drone and can be seen at the end of the video.
https://www.rt.com/russia/558998-ant...-battle-video/