WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/sta...54390903857158

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/sta...55594778234880

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/st...08521336807425

https://twitter.com/AZgeopolitics/st...13180327821312

[Ravenlocke]

Makeyevka. Neocons will push to escalate, will Russia stay the course?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sieZchuM-XM

¤=[Post Update]=¤

[/COLOR] Russia Strikes Druzhovka, Admits 63 Killed Makeyevka; Polish Mobilisation, Entry into Ukraine War

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gn6bo93biYM

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status...95950295683072

[Ravenlocke]

[url]https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/status/1610287915862458368

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Trollstoy88/stat...76343094435846

https://twitter.com/Trollstoy88/stat...34828557115393

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1610008131261571080

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1610288474862616578

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/coope125/status/1610325968937226240

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/uainnl/status/1610401965787193346

[kfm27917]

We've Reached Peak Zelensky. Now What?
Without such subsidies, Zelensky would not have lasted a month in the war. How many hours do you think he is going to last once that flow dries up? And it surely is.

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, on September 1, 2021, in Washington, DC.

When the president of thepoorest,most corrupt nation in Europe is feted with multiple standing ovations by the combined Houses of Congress, and his name invokedin the same breath as Winston Churchill, you know we've reached Peak Zelensky.

It's a farcical, almost psychotic over-promotion, probably surpassed only by the media's shameful, hyperbolic railroading of the country into war with Iraq, in 2003. Paraphrasing Gertrude from Hamlet, "Methinks the media doth hype too much."

Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity.

Let's remember that before ascending to his country's presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky's greatest claim to fame was that he could play the piano with his penis. I'm not joking. And he ran on a platform to unite his country for peace, and for making amends with Russia. Again, I'm not joking.

Now, he's Europe's George Washington, FDR, and Douglas MacArthur all rolled into one and before whom the mighty and powerful genuflect.

Please. The only place to go from here is down. And, that is surely coming. Soon.

Consider some inconvenient facts that the fawning media, which is essentially the public relations arm of the weapons industry, doesn't want you to know.

The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen,recently let slip that the Ukrainian army has lost more than 100,000 troops in the eight months since the beginning of the war. Over the nine-year span of the Vietnam War, the U.S. with a population six times that of Ukraine, lost a total of 58,220 men.

In other words, on a per day, per capita basis, Ukraine is losing soldiers at a rate 141 TIMES that of U.S. losses in Vietnam. The U.S. lost the public on Vietnam when middle class white boys began coming home in body bags. Does anybody with half a brain believe such losses in Ukraine are sustainable? Does anybody have another plan to avert such slaughter?

Von der Leyen is among the shrewdest public figures in the world. What she is doing is laying the predicate for Western withdrawal from Ukraine and ending the War. If you look at the facts on the ground, not the boosterish propaganda ladled out by the media, you can understand why.

In a matter of weeks, Russia, with its hypersonic missiles, destroyed half of Ukraine's electrical power infrastructure. This, as winter is coming on. It can just as easily take out the other half, effectively bombing Ukraine back into the Stone Age. Is that what anybody wants?

The startling, indeed, terrifying part of this is that neither Ukraine nor the West have any defense against these hypersonic missiles. They travel so fast, and on variable trajectories, they cannot be shot down, even by the most advanced Western systems. They represent one of the greatest asymmetries in deliverable destructive power in the history of warfare, probably dwarfed only by the U.S.'s possession of atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

Again, there is no effective defense against them. The Russians have them. The Ukrainians don't. Game over. Can you understand why leaders in the West are beginning to wake up?

On the conventional front, the Ukrainians are having trouble securing even conventional weapons to defend themselves. U.S. arms suppliers are working around the clock to replace their own stocks and the stocks that European countries have given to Ukraine. But the backlog is running into years. A recent headline from The Wall Street Journal stated, "Europe is Rushing Arms to Ukraine but Running Out of Ammo."

Finally, the U.S. has committed $112 billion to Ukraine. That includes $45 billion just slipped into the omnibus funding bill against the likelihood that a Republican-controlled House will cut such funding, almost certainly substantially.

That's more than $10 billion per month since the war started in February. And that doesn't even count the subsidies, both material and financial, from the EU which amount to billions of dollars more per month.

Without such subsidies, Zelensky would not have lasted a month in the war. How many hours do you think he is going to last once that flow dries up? And it surely is.

The Europeans are coming to realize that their continent is being de-industrialized, literally moved backwards an entire epoch in economic terms, because of their willingness to serve as the doormat for the U.S.' imperial war against Russia. Not even they, with their supine fealty to U.S. domination, are willing to commit collective economic suicide on behalf of the U.S.

France's Macron and Germany's Scholz are suggesting that accommodations to Russian interests must be devised in order to bring about a peaceful settlement of the war.

Macron suggestedin a television address to his nation that an antagonized Russia is not in the security interests of Europe. "We need to prepare what we are ready to do…to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table."

Scholz was even more specific. In anarticle in Foreign Affairs he declared, "We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe."

This is a direct repudiation of the U.S.'s maximalist position before the start of the War, that Russia's security needs were of no interest to a marauding NATO.

Even U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is now mooting the idea that territorial concessions must be on the table. In aWall Street Journal article, Blinken stated that, "Our focus is…to take back territory that's been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th."

Notice, that this is a significant climb down from the U.S.' earlier position that all Russian gains since 2014, including Crimea, must be reversed before negotiations could begin. And this is just Blinken's opening hand. More concessions are sure to follow as Russian gains become greater and their likelihood of being reversed, lesser.

Put these four things together: staggering, unsustainable losses of soldiers; terrifying, indefensible asymmetries of destructive power; inability to supply oneself with even conventional defensive weapons; and categorically reduced support from your most important backers.

Does that sound like the formula for winning a war? It is not. It's the formula for losing the war, which is why von der Leyen, Macron, Scholz, and Blinken are now laying pipe for getting out. The tide is going out under Zelensky. He will soon be remembered as a Trivial Pursuits question, or an answer on Jeopardy: "The only modern head of state known to be able to play the piano with his penis." Ding. "Contestant #3?" "Who is Volodymyr Zelensky?"

A peace will soon be declared. Russia will keep the Donbas and Crimea in recognition of the facts on the ground. Both sides will be better off for this. The Donbas is ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and culturally Russian, which is why it voted overwhelmingly for assimilation into Russia. Besides, if Kiev loved them so much, it wouldn't have murdered 14,000 of them over the past eight years and resumed massive shelling in early February of this year, before the Russian invasion.

Ukraine will foreswear any future affiliation with NATO. This is Putin's highest priority and what he asked for--and was denied--in his request to the U.S. and NATO last December, before the invasion was launched. If Russia begins its much-feared winter offensive, as many expect, Ukrainian generals will dispatch Zelensky in a coup rather than send their few remaining soldiers to certain annihilation.

U.S. grain and pharma conglomerates will buy up Ukrainian farmland—some of the best in the world—for pennies on the dollar. This is the standard MO of U.S. multinational vultures coming in after the kill to pick apart the carcasses. U.S. weapons makers will look for and help provoke the next feeding frenzy, much as they materialized Ukraine barely a year after the humiliating U.S. defeat in Afghanistan derailed their last gravy train.

Russia and China, driven together by U.S. bullying, will continue to constellate the nations of the Global South into an anti-Western bloc committed to collaborative, mutually profitable, peaceful development. The U.S. and its closest allies will cower behind the walls they've constructed of the ever-shrinking share of the global economy that they can manage to hold as their own.

Ukraine will prove a turning point in the dismantling of U.S. hegemony over global affairs that it has enjoyed—and, let's be honest, often abused--since 1945. The U.S. public is not psychically prepared for such a come down. But that is the cost of living in the fantasy world that the media lavishes up to keep that self-same public ignorant, fearful, confused, entertained, and distracted.

Finally, the neo-cons who have led the U.S. into the serial debacles of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine, costing the country tens of trillions of dollars and even greater amounts of destroyed reputational capital, will claim their customary immunity from any accountability for their savage failures and cheerily move on to their next calamity. We need to be on the lookout for their next gambit to pillage the treasury and advance their own private interests above those of the nation. It will surely come.

see https://www.commondreams.org/opinion...ng-ukraine-war

[Ravenlocke]

https://www.rt.com/news/569393-uk-il...pying-ukraine/

British military using illegal spy tech in Ukraine – Grayzone

A private company linked to terrorism in Ukraine is providing the British military with illegally-gathered smartphone data to aid the planning of attacks and targeted killings, The Grayzone reported on Tuesday.

According to files leaked to the outlet, the military is making use of data illegally harvested from cell phones in Russia and Ukraine by spy firm Anomaly 6, to enable “the planning of military offensives and artillery attacks, assassinations, asset recruitment, and other measures.”

Previous reporting by the Grayzone revealed that Anomaly 6 employees know their data scraping operation – which can target any smartphone in the world through code surreptitiously embedded in popular apps – is illegal. Britain’s military and intelligence apparatus would be forbidden from gathering this data themselves, but according to the latest report, the Anomaly 6 data is forwarded to them by a UK private military company, Prevail Partners.


Ukraine run by ‘f****d up people’ – US instructor
This arrangement allows the government to bypass oversight and “to gain a realtime/near realtime understanding of the disposition” of Russian “troops, equipment, and lethal materials,” which can then be fed to Kiev. While the US has stated that it limits its intelligence sharing with Ukraine, the UK has not acknowledged any restrictions on the data it hands over.

The unreliable nature of some of this smartphone data, coupled with the Ukrainian military’s willingness to execute so-called “collaborators,” could link London to “crimes against humanity” committed by Kiev against civilians, The Grayzone stated.

Prevail Partners has been implicated in helping the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to build an off-the-books “terror army.” One of its founding members allegedly helped draw up plans for the UK to bomb the Crimean Bridge, shortly before it was damaged in a blast in September that killed four civilians.

Moscow accused the UK of involvement in "[the] training, preparation and execution” of the bridge bombing, and responded to the attack with repeated waves of missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure and military targets.

READ MORE: UK spies building secret ‘terror army’ in Ukraine – Grayzone
The latest revelations raise “the question of how Britain can plausibly claim not to be a formal belligerent in the war,” author Kit Klarenberg wrote on Twitter.

Ukraine’s assassination of Daria Dugina, its destruction of the Crimean Bridge, and attempted murder of Russian State Space Corporation leaders Dmitry Rogozin and Artyom Melnikov may have all been made possible by Anomaly 6’s software and Prevail Partners’ links to the British government, he claimed in the article.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

[url]https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1610780617007894528

https://www.rt.com/russia/569368-ukr...deeper-russia/

Ukraine threatens strikes ‘deeper’ into Russia

There will be new strikes deep into Russian territory, Kirill Budanov, Ukraine’s top spy said on Tuesday. However, he neither denied nor claimed responsibility for a recent attack on a Russian military facility.

Speaking to ABC News, Budanov, who heads Kiev’s Main Intelligence Directorate, was asked whether it was Ukraine which had conducted a recent attack on a Russian airbase. “I can’t give an answer right now to this question. Only after [the] ending of this war,” he replied, adding, though, that he was “glad” to see the strike.

In recent weeks, Moscow has on numerous occasions accused Kiev of carrying out strikes on its military facilities inside Russian territory. Last week, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a Ukrainian drone attempted to target the Engels airfield in Saratov Region, which hosts strategic bombers. Air defenses shot down the drone, but its debris killed three service members, the ministry said at the time.

The top spy went on to predict that Russia was about to face additional attacks. These strikes would become “deeper and deeper,” Budanov claimed, alluding that this would also apply to Crimea.

Russian military issues update on deadly Ukrainian strike
Russian military issues update on deadly Ukrainian strike
He argued that the peninsula is “part of Ukraine.” “We can use any weapon on our territory,” he stated. Crimea overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 following a coup in Kiev.

He also thanked the US for providing support to Ukraine, asking Washington to stay the course and promising that results “would not take very long.” “Every taxpayer in the US will be able to see where every cent went,” Budanov said.

After midnight on January 1, Ukraine used US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to hit a temporary housing area used by Moscow’s forces in the city of Makeyevka in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic. The strike killed 89 people, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry. It also claimed that the HIMARS launcher was later destroyed in a retaliatory strike.

Kiev's forces have also on numerous occasions used HIMARS systems and other Western-supplied arms to target civilian population in the Donbass area. Between June and early December, Ukraine conducted 185 HIMARS strikes on the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, according to local authorities.

Ukraine has repeatedly asked the US to support it with longer-range weapons. However, Washington has so far been reluctant to meet this request over fears of escalation.

In September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned the US that should it provide Kiev with such weaponry, it would cross a “red line” and make America “a direct party to the conflict.”

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/statu...22051178749952

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1611020220793225217

https://www.rt.com/russia/569439-rus...uce-christmas/

Putin announces Christmas truce

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to impose a cessation in hostilities in Ukraine. Hours earlier, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, had called on both sides of the conflict to cease hostilities in the run-up to, and during, the Orthodox Christmas holiday.

According to the Kremlin, the truce is to last from noon local time on Friday January 6 until midnight on Saturday January 7.

“Judging by the fact that a lot of citizens who practice the Orthodox religion live in the embattled area, we call upon the Ukrainian side to proclaim a cessation of hostilities and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day,” a Kremlin statement reads.

READ MORE: Russian Church calls for ‘Christmas truce’ in Ukraine
Earlier on Thursday, Putin discussed the prospect of peace negotiations with Ukraine in a call with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russian president reiterated that Moscow was “open to serious dialogue” with Kiev if the latter recognized the “new territorial realities.”

Erdogan responded that “calls for peace and negotiations should be supported by a unilateral declaration of ceasefire and a vision of a just solution” to the conflict.

Ankara has offered to broker negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in the past. Meaningful peace talks between the two sides effectively collapsed in April, with both Moscow and Kiev blaming the other. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in late December that Ukrainian politicians were “incapable of negotiating,” adding that “the majority of them are blatant Russophobes.”

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/st...77620715642884

https://tass.com/politics/1559133?ut...m_social_share

Putin instructs to declare ceasefire in special operation zone on Orthodox Christmas

Proceeding from the fact that a large number of residents in the combat zone are Orthodox Christians, we are urging the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire to allow them attend services on Christmas Eve as well as on Christmas Day, the statement said

MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed to declare a ceasefire along the entire line of combat engagement in the zone of the special military operation from 12:00 on January 6 until 24:00 on January 7, the Kremlin press service reported on Thursday.

"Considering an address by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I am instructing the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire along the entire line of combat engagement in Ukraine from 12:00 on January 6 until 24:00 on January 7 of this year," according to a document cited by the press service.

"Proceeding from the fact that a large number of residents in the combat zone are Orthodox Christians, we are urging the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire to allow them attend services on Christmas Eve as well as on Christmas Day," the statement said.

Earlier on Thursday, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia addressed the conflicting sides urging them to declare a Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine as well as in Donbass and other Russia’s new regions involved in military actions.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/st...39217214930944

https://tass.com/economy/1559051?utm...m_social_share

Germany’s seizing Russian assets may force other nations to ignore law, speaker warns

The German government has decided to shift problems created by their predecessors on Russia, Vyacheslav Volodin said

MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. The planned seizure of Russian funds and property by Germany for their subsequent transfer to Ukraine may lure other countries into ignoring international law, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Thursday.

"The German government has decided to shift problems created by their predecessors on our country. With this goal in view, they are planning to confiscate Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to Volodin, this decision "would give a start to a process where all countries may ignore international law and seize what they think fit." He said that Germany should remember from its own history "how attempts to infringe on others’ property rights ended."

The senior Russian lawmaker warned that Russia would have the right to similar steps against assets of Germany and other nations if Russian assets are confiscated. "We are living in a different reality now, both in line with the UN Charter and on the basis of precedents. It would therefore be correct to remember the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The United States, Germany, France and other countries who made the decision have no choice but to agree to the right of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic as well as the Kherson and the Zaporozhye regions to self-determination," he explained.

The Duma speaker insisted that European countries, primarily Germany and France, should pay for what is happening in Ukraine, "not only because their economies are the largest in the European Union." "It is [former German chancellor Angela] Merkel and [ex-French president Francois] Hollande who the global public should blame for the conflict in Ukraine after having sabotaged the Minsk agreements," he added.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

https://twitter.com/tassagency_en/st...05899354652672

https://tass.com/politics/1559109?ut...m_social_share

Putin assures Erdogan of Russia’s openness to dialogue on Ukraine - Kremlin

They also discussed the agreements reached in Istanbul to export Ukrainian grain and unblock Russian food and fertilizer exports

MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone conversation on Thursday about the destructive role the West has been playing by pumping Ukraine with arms and assigning targets to it, according to the Kremlin.

The two leaders "discussed the situation around Ukraine. Russia laid an emphasis on the destructive role of Western countries who have been pumping the Kiev regime with weapons and military hardware as well as providing it with operational information and assigning targets to it," the Kremlin said in a statement.

In light of Erdogan’s readiness to mediate a political solution to the conflict, "Putin reiterated that Russia is open to a serious dialogue, given authorities in Kiev meet demands that have been repeatedly put forward, with due account taken of the new territorial realities," the Kremlin added.

According to the Kremlin, Putin and Erdogan also discussed the agreements reached in Istanbul to export Ukrainian grain and unblock Russian food and fertilizer exports.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Trollstoy88/stat...01576146309121

https://twitter.com/Trollstoy88/stat...02245439836161

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/squatsons/status...37409915068420

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Ravenlocke (here)
https://twitter.com/squatsons/status...37409915068420

Well, that's pretty interesting.

It's possible that some readers don't know about this:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

On Christmas Day, 1914 (the first Christmas of the First World War), a one-day truce was agreed. The British and German officers and men all met personally to exchange sincere pleasantries and (astonishingly, but this is really happened) even enjoyed a football (soccer) game with one another.

Here's a most wonderfully and beautifully detailed high-resolution hand-drawn image:



But back then, 100 years ago — military officers were gentleman. And honor and respect (even to one's enemy) were deeply ingrained.

I do believe that quite a few Russian officers (and their equivalent) are gentlemen in the same kind of way, at least to some considerable extent. In this 31 December post, I reported how Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin had visited Ukrainian POWs gifting them a bunch of tangerines and what seemed to be a very sincere New Year's greeting, recognizing them as "fellow Slavs".

And as best as we know and can tell, from the very start Russian officers and soldiers have always treated Ukrainian POWs well.

Not so the opposite. Many Ukrainian soldiers are unfortunate conscripts (real conscripts, press-ganged off the street), and no doubt they are good people who deeply wish they weren't there. What is often their very grim fate is one of the many tragedies of this conflict.

And we've seen videos of how enraged those same soldiers are with being horrendously neglected by their own officers and the officers' Nazi enforcers, who (at best) are disorganized and uncaring and (at worst, as is often the case) are sadistic and cold-bloodedly brutal.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/sta...13420786286592

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/statu...19785659764737

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/sta...31980677767173

https://twitter.com/MaimunkaNews/sta...28062312726528

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status...14414035374080

US Admits Russia Bakhmut Advance, Russia Claims Solidar Gains, US France To Provide Light Armour

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=t-dkJKobNi8