Tag Archives: Kiev

Schrödinger’s War – And Orwell’s

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By Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Source: The Automatic Earth

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 tried to explain the (consequences of the) uncertainty principle, defined by Werner Heisenberg as a core theme of Albert Einstein’s view of quantum mechanics, to … Albert Einstein. The latter must have been thrilled. Even though he did not like the uncertainty principle (God does not play dice). The thought experiment became known as “Schrödinger’s cat”. Since you cannot know both a particle’s position and its speed -and that’s just one example-, you have to assume all possible outcomes are valid (superposition). Only when you “look” does one particular outcome become the “reality”. It’s all part of the subatomic “world”

Wikipedia: “In Schrödinger’s original formulation, a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor (e.g. a Geiger counter) detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison, which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that, after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.”

As I’m trying to explain this, I very much have to wonder if I get it right. And I always thought that follows the uncertainty principle too: I can understand it and not understand it both at the same time. A physicist might fare a bit better, but it won’t come easy.

This is what I was thinking of with regards to the war in Ukraine. Before the fighting started, all possible outcomes seemed equally possible. If you did not look too closely at numbers of soldiers and weaponry, that is. But once it did start (when Schrödinger’s box was opened), it became clear very rapidly that Ukraine had no chance of winning. So why are we still acting as if the box remains closed? Because that way we get to spend billions more on armory, and we get western people to support Zelensky and his neo-nazis as those same people suffer from high prices for everything. Any outcome is still possible!

Take the Kakhovka dam narrative, or Nord Stream or any of the numerous other examples. When both sides accuse each other of perpetrating a certain event, Schrödinger’s box remains closed. Which is exactly what our politicians and arms makers desire. They don’t want us to know that they’ve been beaten by Russia, because you would no longer support their policies and their arms purchases. They want “superposition”. They can’t very well declare victory -though they try-, but they don’t need to either. They need uncertainty. Politicians, arms makers and media. They all profit from keeping you in the dark.

The best comment on Kakhovka I’ve seen perhaps comes from @CheburekiMan on Twitter: “Restoring water flow to the North Crimean Canal was top priority for Russia, the very first act of the SMO. Before Kiev shut off the flow in 2014, the canal was supplying 85% of Crimea’s water. So much depended on it, from crops to industry to drinking water, that’s how important it is. Now the pro-Ukraine bleating sheep want people to believe that Russia would wreck the dam, empty the reservoir and cause serious harm to its own people by running the canal dry. It’s so bonkers that one has to seriously consider such ideas are the result of brain damage, or perhaps fetal alcohol syndrome.”

Where Orwell comes in is in the terminology. Where “War equals Peace”. The EU pays its member states for the second hand weapons they “donate” to Kiev, through something called the European Peace Fund (aka Facility). Mass weapons deliveries that get huge numbers of people killed, are labeled “Peace”. Zelensky touts a plan labeled a Peace Plan, which demands Russia give back all territories, pay war reparations, deliver Putin et al to some international criminal court etc. The chance of that happening is of course zero, but as long as Schrödinger’s box remains closed, anything is possible. Still, it is a War Plan, not a Peace Plan.

Similarly, Zelensky and his international backers are organizing a Peace Summit, where everybody is invited except Russia. That makes it a War Summit. The suggestion made to westerners is that this is a globally supported initiative, but it is only a small part of the world population (10%?) that supports it. NATO+Japan+Australia. Did I leave anyone out? New Zealand? Ha ha ha, I read that Jacinda Ardern was made a dame. If you know a better illustration of how deep we’ve sunk, I’m game.

All the rest of the world is much more interested in the economic developments that involve BRICS+. 31 and counting nations have expressed interest in joining. And they’re not going to risk their potential role in that over a local fight far away that they know is long decided. US/NATO, in provoking this war, have lost not only the fight, but much more importantly, their economic power. Recently, the G7 were talking about what they were going to do in Central Asia. Which is basically all the “-Stans” left over after the Soviet Union dissolved. But the G7 is not going to do anything, it has no power there anymore. All these countries want to join the BRICS+. Why would you join a waning power if you have a shot at joining a power in its ascendancy, that all your neighbors are also joining?

The same attitude is prevalent in Africa, South America, East Asia, etc. Full of countries that remember how they were treated through the years by first Europe and then the US. The world has changed beyond recognition since the start of Russia’s SMO, and the “globalist west” is the only “region” that doesn’t recognize this. The USD won’t be replaced tomorrow as the reserve currency, but it doesn’t have to be. The process goes step by step, and is unstoppable. Hemingway’s famous words about how you go bankrupt (first gradually, then suddenly) have us on the wrong foot here. We only look at the “suddenly” part when it comes to the reserve currency, and ignore all the “gradually” steps. And then one day we will wake up and everything’s changed.

The rest of the world sees Schrödinger’s box as open. Only the west thinks that it’s still closed, and all possible outcomes are still viable.

Those ‘Dam’ Russians… Now They’re Flooding Themselves for Propaganda!

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By Finian Cunningham

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

It’s not the Russians who are perverse and barbaric. It’s the Western regimes and their Nazi terrorist front in Ukraine.

Western media would have its consumers believe that Russians are the most devious, perverse, and self-destructive people on Earth. Following a flood of jaw-dropping, biblical proportions in the Russian-controlled Kherson region this week, the Western media amplified the Kiev regime’s talking points, which is to say, the Kiev regime’s Western sponsors’ talking points.

The Russians are destroying themselves for propaganda gain, according to those talking points.

The giant Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant was spectacularly blown up by an explosion or explosions and its vast reservoir began flooding hundreds of cities and villages in the surrounding Kherson countryside. The nearby city of Nova Kakhovka with a population of 45,000 is being evacuated. Aerial images of the deluge show an unprecedented disaster with huge environmental, economic and social repercussions.

The damage from the dam’s collapse is catastrophic. The impact of displacement and destroyed livelihoods, businesses and industries will affect millions of Russian citizens. Kherson is one of the four former Ukrainian territories that voted to join the Russian Federation in referenda last year following Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine to neutralize what was then ongoing aggression from the Kiev regime towards ethnic Russians.

Of the countless consequences from the dam’s destruction, there are two main specific impacts of priority concern. The Kakhovka power plant serves to supply water for the upstream Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant – Europe’s largest civilian nuclear power station. Disruption of the water supply could adversely impact the cooling systems at the nuclear plant, causing its reactors to blow up thereby creating a radiation disaster. The Zaporozhye nuclear station is in Russian-controlled territory and has been under Russian military protection since the beginning of Russia’s military intervention on February 24, 2022.

A second consequence from the dam’s collapse is the threat to cut off supply of drinking water to Russia’s Crimea Peninsula where some 3 million people live.

It is obvious who gains and who loses from the blowing up of the Kakhovka hydro facility. The NATO-backed Kiev regime has inflicted massive damage to Russian infrastructure in the Kherson region and beyond.

Yet, in spite of the patently obvious conclusion, Western media and governments are trying to tell the world that the dam was sabotaged by Russian “terrorists”. British foreign minister James (Not-So) Cleverly and the European Union’s Charles Michel were among the Western politicians who were immediately trying to cast the Kremlin as the villain.

It takes an inestimable capacity for double-think and debilitating Russophobia for such logic to be articulated with a straight face.

This a repeat of the same stultifying nonsense that followed the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September. When the Russian-owned pipelines under the Baltic Sea were blown up, the Western governments and their dutiful media immediately blamed Russia for sabotaging its own infrastructure. It transpired later that the gas pipes were mined by the U.S. military, an act of terrorism that was ordered by President Joe Biden, according to respected veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. Months later, the Western media ignored or censored out this most plausible cause as a means to delete European-Russian energy trade for America’s strategic interests.

The same double-think by Western governments and media has been deployed over the constant artillery attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear plant. For months, the plant has been bombarded by the Kiev regime with U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets. The unspeakable nefarious objective is to cause a nuclear catastrophe in Europe. The Russians are guarding the nuclear facility and have presented documentary evidence to the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency of who is doing the shelling. Yet, the UN and IAEA as well as the Western media feign a cynical agnosticism about who the nuclear terrorists are, trying to leave question marks that Russia may be somehow inflicting self-sabotage.

The same shelling tactics have been used to hit the Kakhovka dam over many months by Kiev regime forces. It was Russia that has repeatedly warned of the imminent danger of flooding if the hydro plant was crippled. That warning has come to reality, though the Western media are defying cause, motive and past record to invert the accusations.

The Kiev regime has claimed that Russia bombed the Kakhovka dam in order to hamper its planned counteroffensive. This week saw intensified efforts along the 1000-kilometer front line between Ukrainian forces and Russian-held territory. Moscow said it repelled the attacks with heavy losses incurred by the Ukrainian side. Those battles occurred much further to the north from the Kherson region on the Black Sea where the dam was blown.

Adding two and two and getting five is the usual Western media formula because, more than ever, this media system is shown to be a propaganda service, both private and state-owned.

The shamelessness of such media’s double-think is breathtaking to any rational observer. What’s more, the Western public can more and more see through the lies and preposterous pretensions of “independent journalism”. The Western media is a war ministry aiming to demonize Russia as barbarians whose level of sub-humanity, it is implied, is deserving of war and destruction.

In case you didn’t notice, such a mindset is consistent with Nazi ideology.

It’s not the Russians who are perverse and barbaric. It’s the Western regimes and their Nazi terrorist front in Ukraine.

BYE, BYE KIEV, HELLO COTE D’AZUR: AS WESTERNERS SEND AID, HERE’S HOW UKRAINE’S CORRUPT ELITES ARE PROFITING FROM THE CONFLICT

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Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky (C) walks to his Presidential office after a ceremony of his oath in the Ukrainian Parliament, in Kiev, Ukraine. © STR / NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Olga Sukharevskaya

Source: New Cold War

For years, and particularly since the beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, the United States, the European Union – and their allies – have provided Kiev with $126 billion worth of aid, a number almost equal to the country’s entire GDP but Olga Sukharevskaya reports that officials and oligarchs have diverted much of the financial support sent to Kiev
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Since the beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, the United States, the European Union – and their allies – have provided Kiev with $126 billion worth of aid, a number almost equal to the country’s entire GDP. Moreover, millions of Ukrainians have found refuge in the EU where they were given housing, food, work permits, and emotional support. The scope is huge, even by western standards. Considering that the bloc has been funding Kiev while coping with an economic and energy crisis of its own, the assistance is perhaps especially notable.

Kiev bases its endless funding requests on the collapse of its economy, due to the war, and its need to “resist Russian aggression.” But is the aid reaching its intended destination?

The Monaco Battalion

While Ukraine has undergone a general mobilization affecting all men under the age of 60, many former and current high-ranking officials, politicians, businessmen, and oligarchs have moved to safety abroad – mainly to the EU.

The mass flight of Ukrainian elites started even prior to the armed conflict. On February 14, 2022, 37 deputies from the Ukrainian president’s parliamentary faction “Servant of the People” suddenly went “missing.” Had MPs not been banned from leaving the country the very next day, others would’ve definitely joined them. Meanwhile, former officials and oligarchs enjoyed more freedom to move around. According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 20 business jets took off from Kiev’s Boryspol airport on the 14th as well.

Tycoons were at the front of the line. Entrepreneur and MP Vadim Novinsky, businessmen Vasily Khmelnitsky and Vadim Stolar, Vadim Nesterenko, and Andrey Stavnitzer all left the country on charter flights. Millionaire politician Igor Abramovich booked a private flight to Austria for 50 people – taking relatives, business partners, and fellow party members aboard. Oligarchs flew from Kiev to Nice, Munich, Vienna,  Cyprus, and other EU destinations. Another group of businessmen took off from Odessa on private planes. The owner of Vostok Bank departed for Israel, while the head of the Transship group flew to Limassol. An ex-governor of the Odessa region, Stalkanat’s Vladimir Nemirovsky, also left the country.

In the summer and early fall of 2022, ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ prepared several investigative documentaries about fit-for-service Ukrainian billionaires and officials spotted vacationing on the Côte d’Azur during the war. A movie with the ironic title “The Monaco Battalion” shows Ukrainian oligarchs resting at their villas, mansions, and on yachts. In the first part, we see businessman Konstantin Zhevago, who is included on Interpol’s wanted list, relaxing on his private yacht worth $70 million. The yacht graces the shoreline of the Côte d’Azur as Zhevago’s family disembarks. Kharkov entrepreneur Alexander Yaroslavsky, who promised to sell his yacht and transfer the funds towards the restoration of Kharkov, can be seen sailing alongside.

‘Ukrainska Pravda’ journalists also got a glimpse of the Surkis brothers in France, who’re currently renting apartments worth €2 million per year. Meanwhile, a $300,000 Bentley belonging to Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev was spotted near the casino in Monaco, and Eduard Kohan, the co-founder of Euroenergotrade, was seen at one of Monte Carlo’s chic hotels.

A whole colony of Ukrainian oligarchs has apparently taken up residence in the elite French commune of Cap-Ferrat. Land developer Vadim Solar, oligarchs Dmitry Firtash, Vitaly Khomutynnik, and Sergey Lovochkin are among those enjoying high life in the middle of the war. The Cap-Ferrat villa once belonging to King Leopold II of Belgium was bought by the richest Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. His neighbors are Alexander Davtyan, President of the Investment Group DAD LLC, and Vladislav Gelzin, a former deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council.

As the creators of the film repeatedly emphasize, deputies and businessmen of “pro-Russian” parliamentary factions left the country during the war. Yet many active supporters of the current government also prefer to defend their homeland from abroad.

‘Ukrainska Pravda’ managed to interview Andrei Kholodov, an MP from Vladimir Zelensky’s faction “Servant of the People”, from his current residence in Vienna. The Austrian capital was also chosen by nationalist Nikita Poturaev and Sergei Melnichuk, a former head of the Aidar battalion known for war crimes reported by Amnesty International. The former head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, 59-year-old Alexander Tupitsky, and the 45-year-old ex-prosecutor general of Ukraine Ruslan Ryaboshapka also preferred foreign “trenches.”

Members of the Ukrainian parliament are in no hurry to adopt vitally important laws for the country during wartime. According to the Telegram channel “Volyn News,” as of March 11, 2022, more than 20 MPs had moved abroad for unspecified reasons. The geography is extensive: Great Britain, Poland, Qatar, Spain, France, Austria, Romania, Hungary, UAE, Moldova, Israel, etc. In March, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine launched an investigation into the actions of six parliamentarians who have remained abroad.

Apparently, neither war nor punishment can put Ukrainian legislators to work. Only 99 deputies out of 450 attended the session of the Parliament on July 20. Presumably distracted by summer, the Côte d’Azur, the Maldives, and yachts… As for defending Ukraine itself – just leave it to the foreign volunteers, they say.

Where’s all the military and humanitarian aid going?

Some western benefactors have recently noticed that most of the military and humanitarian aid never reaches Ukraine’s army or ordinary citizens.

In an original documentary, CBS reported that about 70% of military aid failed to find its way to the intended beneficiaries and donor countries are often unable to control its intended use. According to the creators of the report, some of the weapons are sold on the black market. As US Marine Corps veteran Andy Milburn said, “I can tell you unarguably that on the frontline units these things are not getting there. Drones, Switchblades, IFAKs. They’re not, alright. Body armor, helmets, you name it.”

The Grayzone writes that weapons and humanitarian aid provided by the West to the Ukrainian military is being stolen along the way and never reaches the soldiers. At the same time, Ukrainian MPs recently gave themselves a 70% pay raise. The author of the piece argues that billions of dollars from the USA and the EU have been diverted.

A Ukrainian soldier named Ivan told journalists about western funds never reaching the front: “Imagine telling an American soldier that we are using our personal cars in the war, and we’re also responsible for paying for repairs and fuel. We’re buying our own body armor and helmets. We don’t have observation tools or cameras, so soldiers have to pop their heads out to see what’s coming, which means at any moment, a rocket or tank can tear their heads off.”

Samantha Morris, a medical doctor from the US, drew attention to the theft of medical supplies and the overall corruption: “The lead doctor at the military base in Sumy has ordered medical supplies from and for the military at different points in time, and he has had 15 trucks of supplies completely disappear,” she said. The doctors couldn’t even set up courses for medical assistants until a friend of the Sumy region governor interceded.

CNN talked to a retired US colonel who said that Ukrainian troops are short on supplies. Small arms, medical equipment, field hospitals and a lot more are under the control of private organizations – more concerned about stealing money than saving the lives of their compatriots.

As Stephen Myers, a former member of the US Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, insisted, “There is little to prevent a field commander from diverting some of the equipment to buyers, aka the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians or whomever, while claiming the equipment and weapons were destroyed…”

Thousands of tons of humanitarian aid is being stolen. In September, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) proved that the head of the Office of the President, Andrei Yermak, his deputy Kirill Tymoshenko, the head of “The Servant of the People” faction David Arakhamiya and his friend Vemir Davityan were behind the large-scale theft of humanitarian aid in the Zaporozhye region. Zaporozhye officials Starukh, Nekrasova, Sherbina, and Kurtev only superficially carried out the task of distributing aid. In six months, they organized the theft of 22 sea containers, 389 railway cars, and 220 trucks. Humanitarian aid was sold in ATB and Selpo – supermarkets owned by Gennady Butkevich and Vladimir Kostelman, respectively. Of course, Tymoshenko, Nekrasova and Davityan all became “refugees” and found asylum in Vienna.

Admittedly, not everyone is on the run. Andrei Yarmolsky, the scandalous former deputy head of the Volyn regional administration – accused of stealing humanitarian aid, supplying defective bulletproof vests, and illegally moving men out of the country – was promoted. He now works for the National Security and Defense Council.

Medical supplies are also being stolen. The Telegraph reportsthat “some of the donated supplies later made their way onto the hospitals’ pharmacy shelves: priced, and listed for sale”. Health workers appropriate medicine, bandages, and medical equipment, and resell them to patients for whom they were intended to be free, the article says.

A similar story was told by the aforementioned doctor Dr Morris: “I got a call from a nurse at a military hospital in Dnipro. She said the president of the hospital had stolen all the pain medications to resell them, and that the wounded soldiers being treated there had no pain relief. She begged us to hand-deliver pain medications to her. She said she would hide them from the hospital president so that they’d reach the soldiers. But who can you trust? Was the hospital president really stealing the medications, or was she trying to con us into giving her pain medications for her to sell or use? Who knows. Everyone is lying.”

War for some, Gucci for others

Enormous cash flows from Western countries are continuously used by corrupt Ukrainian officials for personal enrichment and to acquire luxury goods.

In a recently busted corruption scheme, Odessa customs smuggled shirts, backpacks, sports shoes, belts, and other luxury items by Givenchy, Gucci, Polo, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Armani under the guise of army equipment. The documents, declaring the cargo as “for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” were signed by the acting head of the Odessa customs Vitaly Zakolodyazhny. According to MP Alexander Dubinsky, this is a common theft scheme. “The work of the customs is unsatisfactory because while some are fighting at the front, others are making money under the guise of their customs uniforms,” the parliamentarian said.

To take another example, in May 2022, Western countries abolished customs duties for Ukraine. Within a week, over 14,000 passenger cars were imported into the country. As the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Mustafa Nayem commented, “Considering we’re a country at war, our partners in Poland, Slovakia, and Romania were quite surprised by this fast-paced upgrade to our vehicle fleet.”

As they go about acquiring luxurious clothes and cars, the thieves are also taking care to withdraw capital from Ukraine.

According to the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, Ukraine’s budget is missing UAH 4.5 billion worth of taxes from agrotraders: “In August-September 2022, almost 12 million tons of grain crops and oil estimated at UAH 137 billion were exported through the customs territory of Ukraine. Of these, almost 4 million tons were exported by fake companies existing only on paper.” Moreover, “most of the non-resident companies to which grain is exported are high-risk and involved in criminal investigations.” Is this the “grain deal” that the global community is actively cheering? It looks like Ukrainian fraudsters are corrupting not just their own country, but foreign states as well. And this is just one example out of many.

When the Surkis brothers left Ukraine, they took $17 million with them. But that’s just a trifle compared to the “heroes of the Euromaidan.” According to former People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleg Tsarev, after the outbreak of hostilities leading Ukrainian politicians sent both their capital and their families abroad.

He mentions that the parents and relatives of President Vladimir Zelensky and his wife all left the country. Zelensky’s predecessor, former president Petr Poroshenko, moved not just his children but also about a billion US dollars in cash to the UK.

The same applies to other major Ukrainian officials: former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak, the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and many others all took their families and fortunes, estimated at around a billion dollars, out of the country. And that’s not to mention the numerous politically-affiliated oligarchs.

Scammers of smaller stature can “individually join the EU” as well. A system of bribery allows military-age males to leave the country. According to Izvestia, the fee is currently between $8,000 and $10,000. The Ukrainian media also actively reports on people paying to cross the border.

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The sympathy of Westerners towards a country at war is understandable. But while some countries are doing their upmost to aid Ukraine – even while facing an economic crisis themselves – corrupt Ukrainian officials are using the funding to amass personal fortunes and live the high life at fancy resorts. And all at the expense of taxpayers in the West.

In 2015, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, upon leaving the post of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, openly declared that he had become a billionaire. It is yet to be seen how many new Ukrainian super rich tycoons – nurtured by foreign military aid – will appear in the West by the end of the conflict.

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Olga Sukharevskaya is a former Ukrainian diplomat

Putin’s Sledgehammer

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By Mike Whitney

Source: The Unz Review

“The Ukrainians are in bad shape… It won’t be long before the Ukrainians run out of food. It won’t be long before they freeze… They have done all that we can reasonably expect them to do. It’s time to negotiate…. before the offensive begins, because once it begins, there will be no further discussion between Moscow and Kiev until it is over to the satisfaction of the Russians.” Colonel Douglas MacGregor, “War in Ukraine; Quiet Before the Storm”, 15 minute-mark

“Strictly speaking, we haven’t started anything yet.” Russian President Vladimir Putin

The relentless attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid, fuel-storage units, railway hubs, and Command-and-Control centers mark the beginning of a second and more lethal phase of the war. The increased tempo of the high-precision, long-range missile attacks suggests that Moscow is laying the groundwork for a major winter offensive that will be launched as soon as Russia’s 300,000 reservists join their formations in east Ukraine. Kiev’s refusal to negotiate a settlement that addresses Russia’s core security concerns, has left Russian president Vladimir Putin with no other option but to defeat Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and impose a settlement through force-of-arms. The impending winter offensive is designed to deliver the knock-out punch Russia needs to achieve its strategic objectives and bring the war to swift end. This is from Reuters:

Russian missile strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system, the government said on Friday, and authorities in the capital Kyiv warned that the city could face a “complete shutdown” of the power grid as winter sets in.

With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in nine months of war.

The United Nations says Ukraine’s electricity and water shortages threaten a humanitarian disaster this winter.

“Unfortunately Russia continues to carry out missile strikes on Ukraine’s civilian and critical infrastructure. Almost half of our energy system is disabled,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said….

“We are preparing for different scenarios, including a complete shutdown,” Mykola Povoroznyk, deputy head of the Kyiv city administration, said in televised comments.” (“Ukraine says half its energy system crippled by Russian attacks, Kyiv could ‘shutdown’”, Reuters)

Until recently, Russia had avoided targets that would dramatically impact civilian activities, but now military leaders have returned to a more conventional approach. Presently, the military is destroying whatever facilities, transformers, storage units, substations, rail yards and energy depots that allow Ukraine to continue to wage war. Clearly –as the bigger and more powerful state — it was always within Russia’s ability to take a sledgehammer to Ukraine and break it into a million pieces, but Putin chose to hold back hoping that Kiev would come to its senses and see the hopelessness of its cause. And –despite the deluge of western propaganda to the contrary– the outcome of this war has never been in doubt. Russia is going to impose a settlement on Kiev and that settlement will require the government to cut all ties with NATO and to sign a treaty declaring its neutrality into perpetuity. Russia is not going to allow a hostile military alliance to place its missile sites and combat troops on its western flank. That won’t happen.

Unfortunately, Russia’s military operation is going to greatly increase the suffering of the Ukrainian people who find themselves locked in a cage-match between the Washington and Moscow. This is from the World Socialist Web Site:

Poverty in Ukraine has increased more than tenfold since the outbreak of the US/NATO-Russia war, according to the latest data from the World Bank (WB). Officially, 25 percent of the country’s population is now poor, up from supposedly just 2 percent before February 2022… With officials predicting that the poverty rate could rise to as much as 60 percent or more next year, levels of deprivation are emerging in Ukraine that have not been witnessed on the European continent since the end of World War II.

Unemployment is now running at 35 percent, and salaries have fallen by as much as 50 percent over the spring and summer for some categories of workers. … according to the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s public debt has now soared to 85 percent of GDP…. A recently released joint study by the World Health Organization and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health found that 22 percent of people in Ukraine cannot access essential medicines. For the country’s 6.9 million internally displaced, that number rises to 33 percent.

…The medications that are hardest to get—those that treat blood pressure, heart problems and pain, as well as sedatives and antibiotics—reveal a population struggling to cope with decades of poverty-induced ill health and the physical and psychological trauma of war.

While US and NATO officials are able to dispatch massive amounts of firepower to Ukraine’s front lines within a matter of weeks, the delivery of life-saving humanitarian goods is seemingly an impossible logistical challenge.” (“Poverty skyrockets in Ukraine”, World Socialist Web Site)

Washington’s proxy-war on Moscow has inflicted incalculable suffering on the people of Ukraine who now face plunging temperatures, dwindling food supplies, a crashing economy and a growing shortage of essential medications. And despite the chest-thumping bravado over the recapturing of Kherson, the Ukrainian people will now be forced to flee their battered homeland by the millions seeking refuge in Europe which has already slipped into a post-industrial slump brought on by Uncle Sam’s reckless provocations. How many of these working-class Ukrainians would have preferred that their leaders reach an accommodation with Putin (regarding his legitimate security concerns) rather than engaging the Russian army in a pointless war which has cost them their homes, their jobs, their cities, and (for many) their lives? And do the people outside the country who claim to “Stand With Ukraine” realize that they are actually supporting the impoverishment and immiseration of millions of civilians that are caught in a geopolitical crossfire between Washington and Russia? Anyone who genuinely cares about Ukraine should support Ukrainian neutrality and an end to NATO expansion. That is the only way this war is going to end. Russian security will be achieved by-way of a treaty or an iron-fist. The choice is Ukraine’s. This is from an article titled ‘Russia Is Right: The U.S. Is Waging a Proxy War in Ukraine‘:

“The war in Ukraine isn’t just a conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared. It is a “proxy war” in which the world’s most powerful military alliance … is using Ukraine as a battering ram against the Russian state … Lavrov is … not wrong. Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effectively proxy wars in modern history.”

The US foreign policy establishment does not care about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. The country is merely a launching pad for Washington’s war on Russia. That is why the CIA toppled the democratically-elected government in Kiev in 2014 and that is why the CIA armed and trained Ukrainian paramilitaries to fight the Russian military in 2015 (7 years before the invasion!) Here’s some background from a 2015 article at Yahoo News:

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials….

“The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.”

…the CIA and other U.S. agencies could support a Ukrainian insurgency, should Russia launch a large-scale incursion.

…“We’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. …representatives from both countries also believe that Russia won’t be able to hold on to new territory indefinitely because of stiff resistance from Ukrainian insurgents, according to former officials.

If the Russians launch a new invasion, “there’s going to be people who make their life miserable,” said the former senior intelligence official…

“All that stuff that happened to us in Afghanistan,” said the former senior intelligence official, “they can expect to see that in spades with these guys.” (“CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades”, Yahoo News)

There it is in black and white. The plan to use Ukraine as a staging-ground for conducting a proxy-war on Russia preceded the invasion by at least 7 years. The Obama administration and their neocon allies set a trap for Russia in order to drag them into an Afghanistan-like quagmire that would deplete their resources and kill as many Russian servicemen as possible. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently admitted, the US wants to “weaken” Russia so it is unable to project power beyond its borders. Washington seeks unhindered access to Central Asia so it can encircle China with military bases and nuclear missiles. The US intends to control China’s growth while dominating the world’s most populous and prosperous region of the next century, Asia. But first, Washington must crush Russia, collapse its economy, isolate it from the global community, demonize it in its media, and topple its leaders. Ukraine is seen as the first phase in a much broader strategy aimed at regime change (in Moscow) followed by the forced fragmentation of the Russian state. The ultimate objective is the preservation of Washington’s preeminent role in the global order.

Putin’s winter offensive threatens to derail Washington’s plan to drag the conflict out for as long as possible. In the weeks and months ahead, Russia is going to intensify its assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Most of the country will be plunged into darkness, fuel supplies will dry up, food and water will become scarcer, communications will be cut off, and all rail-traffic will cease. Millions of civilians will flee to Europe while the entire country slowly grinds to a standstill. At the same time that Russian battalions overtake cities and towns east of the Dnieper, the Russian army will block vital supply-lines from Poland cutting off the flow of lethal weaponry and combat troops headed to the front. This, in turn, will lead to widespread capitulation among Ukrainian fighting units operating in the field which will force Zelensky to the negotiating table. Eventually, Russia will prevail and its legitimate security demands will be met. Here’s how Colonel Douglas MacGregor summed it up in a recent interview:

“What’s coming in the future is a very massive offensive... the kind of offensive that I and many other military analysts expected at the beginning; Very decisive operations, multiple operational axes designed to effectively annihilate the enemy on the ground. And that’s what’s coming now, that’s what lies in the future.” (Colonel Douglas MacGregor, “War in Ukraine; Quiet Before the Storm”, you tube)

When the ground freezes, Russia’s offensive will begin.

FTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga

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By Kit Klarenberg

Source: The Grayzone

The Ukrainian government mysteriously disappeared online records of its fundraising arrangement with the FTX crypto scam just days before the scandal erupted. The initiative claims to have raised $60 million for Ukraine, but where did the money go?

The demise of FTX, the fifth-biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume in 2022, and the second-largest by holdings, has sent a wave of chaos through global financial markets. 

As the turbulence grows, the government of Ukraine is conducting an ongoing cleanup and whitewashing operation to rid any and all references to a high-level cryptocurrency fundraising arrangement it struck with FTX from the web. Eerily, it seems to have commenced just days before the scandal erupted. 

Online records unearthed by The Grayzone claim tens of millions were raised by FTX for the Ukrainian government, and put to a variety of belligerent uses. But with the company now exposed as a Potemkin village lacking underlying assets, and major question marks hanging over whether its operations were from day one fraudulent top to bottom, where does that leave the supposedly successful donation scheme? Were those sums truly raised, and if so, to what purposes were they actually put?

FTX’s destruction resulted from a mass sell-off of the company’s native bitcoin token, FTT, by the rival exchange, Binance. Its value plummeted, prompting a three-day “run” on billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, which in turn created – or exposed – a “liquidity crisis” within FTX, as it did not have the available assets required to redeem client withdrawals. FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11th. 

FTX founder and top Democrat Party donor Sam Bankman-Fried now faces criminal investigations in the Bahamas, where the exchange was headquartered, and calls for official investigations into the largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry are reverberating across the globe.

The sudden death of FTX has been compared to the 2008 disintegration of Lehman Brothers that precipitated the financial crisis.

Massive customer holdings have apparently gone missing thanks to a secret “back door” in the FTX bookkeeping system that allowed Bankman-Fried to make changes to the company’s financial records without any accountability. This connivance may have been used to hide at least $10 billion in client funds Bankman-Fried transferred from exchange to another company he founded, digital asset trader Alameda Research. 

While mainstream media pores over the details of Bankman-Fried’s gargantuan crypto scam, not one single major outlet has investigated or even acknowledged FTX’s relationship with the government of Ukraine. 

Were client holdings unaccountably and illegally funneled into the West’s proxy war? Or did the supposed aid FTX sent to Kiev find its way into the hands of Ukrainian scammers, corrupt warlords and illicit actors? 

The corporate media’s failure to explore these questions appears all the more perverse given Bankman-Fried’s flamboyant promotion of his intimate financial relationship with the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

FTX pledges to “turn bitcoin into bullets, bandages and other war materiel” for Ukraine

The partnership between FTX and the Ukrainian government was first publicized on March 14th when the leading cryptocurrency website CoinDesk announced Kiev had launched a dedicated webpage for cryptocurrency donations dubbed Aid for Ukraine.

Under its auspices, FTX pledged to “convert crypto contributions to Ukraine’s war effort into fiat for deposit” at the National Bank of Kiev, allowing the embattled government to “turn bitcoin into bullets, bandages and other war materiel.” CoinDesk stated the initiative “deepens an unprecedented tie-up between public and private sector forces in crypto.” 

Oleksandr Bornyakov, an official at Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, hinted to CoinDesk about an “upcoming NFT collection” auction to “give the next boost to the crypto fundraising process.”

(Bornyakov’s Ministry of Digital Transformation played a key role in the successful, Zelensky-led campaign to cancel The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate’s appearance at Web Summit, a major international gathering of the tech industry in Lisbon, Portugal). 

In a press release accompanying the announcement of the FTX partnership with Ukraine, Bankman-Fried explained that, “at the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, FTX felt the need to provide assistance in any way it could.” He promised that the arrangement provided “the ability to deliver aid and resources to the people who need it most.”

Kiev disappears Aid for Ukraine site days before FTX scandal goes public

The Aid for Ukraine webpage has now been deleted, but can still be accessed via the Internet Archive. Until very recently, it encouraged visitors to “help Ukraine with crypto” and pleaded, “don’t leave us alone with the enemy.” 

The site featured promotional quotes from an assortment of Ukrainian government officials and bitcoin bros – among them, FTX’s founder.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, thanked “the crypto community” for funding the purchase of helmets, bulletproof vests, and night vision devices. For his part, Bankman-Fried declared himself “incredibly excited and humbled” to “support crypto donations to Ukraine.”

The last available Internet Archive capture of Aid for Ukraine” took place on the afternoon of October 26th. Throughout the webpage’s existence, the Internet Archive captured multiple snapshots of it weekly. This clearly indicates the page was purged by Kiev in late October, several days before the FTX crisis initially broke out.

Once it was deleted, the Ukrainian government created a standalone website on November 1st to promote the endeavor. The page was identical, and quotes from Bankman-Fried, and references to FTX’s involvement and its logo, remained in place until the morning of November 15th.

Was the original webpage’s dumping and erasure, and the shift to a totally new interface, at that time merely a spooky coincidence, or were the Ukrainians warned of what was coming? What did Kiev know, and when did it know it?

Bankman-Fried channeled millions to Biden through “stealth” PAC

Though FTX has been accused of serving as a money laundering vehicle for the US Democratic Party, concrete evidence supporting this claim has yet to materialize. But given Bankman-Fried’s background as one of the most prolific donors to the Democrats, and the role he played as a nexus between party power-brokers and the cryptocurrency sphere, the allegations are understandable. 

Bankman-Fried is the son of Stanford law professor Barbara Friedman, founder of a shadowy Super PAC called Mind the Gap which quietly channeled millions to Democratic party candidates, primarily from nameless Silicon Valley investors. 

The organization has no website or social media footprint, and its founders do not advertise their involvement publicly. Chosen through complex data analysis, beneficiaries of the Super PAC often have no idea themselves who or what has donated to their campaigns.

“The raison d’être is stealth,” an individual “with ties to the organization” told Vox back in 2020.

Bankman-Fried establishment of FTX in April 2019 – the same month Joe Biden announced his 2020 Presidential run – has added to the intrigue surrounding the scandal. Once vast sums started flowing into and through the FTX exchange, its founder channeled profits into Biden’s campaign coffers. Oddly, Bankman-Fried had no prior history of political giving.

Throughout the 2020 campaign, Bankman-Fried gifted over $5 million to Biden and groups supporting him. This reportedly helped fuel a potentially decisive “nine-figure, eleventh-hour blitz of TV advertising” targeting swing states, and made the crypto bro the second-largest donor to the president, right behind Michael Bloomberg.

Bankman-Fried claimed this wellspring of generosity was “motivated less by specific issues than by the Biden team’s ‘generic stability and decision-making process.’” Such an apparent lack of enthusiasm for the President stands at odds with the staggering sums he has pumped into Democratic party coffers ever since. 

In 2022 alone, Bankman-Fried lavished almost $40 million on Democratic candidates, campaigns, and PACs. The giving spree made him the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes, behind liberal venture capitalist George Soros. 

More recently, Bankman-Fried pledged to donate a staggering $1 billion between this year and 2024 to ensure a Democratic victory in the next presidential vote. On October 14th, however, he completely backtracked, branding the investment a “dumb” move. Something scandalous was brewing behind the scenes.

One week later, the Texas State Securities Board announced it was investigating FTX on suspicion of selling unregistered securities. The development went largely unnoticed by the media. To the extent it generated any interest at all, it was framed as just one of several examples of financial authorities scrutinizing crypto players.

What happened to the $60 million raised by Aid for Ukraine?

If FTX was indeed laundering funds for the proxy war in Ukraine, the slightest indication that regulators were investigating its operations would have triggered alarm bells throughout Washington – and by extension, Kiev. This may be why the Ukrainian government switched the Aid for Ukraine webpage with a dedicated website, and scrubbed the original entirely from the internet just days after the announcement.

Also curious are the Internet Archive captures of the Aid for Ukraine website that show records of funds purportedly flowing to Kiev via Bitcoin had not been updated since July. At the time, the webpage reported that over $60 million had been raised by the “community.” This figure is reflected on the updated standalone Aid for Ukraine fundraising site.

A breakdown of spending on the new Aid for Ukraine website states Kiev had spent a total of $54,573,622 in cryptocurrency donations by July 7th on a wide variety of equipment, vehicles, drones, “lethal equipment” and other resources. One of the biggest single expenditures was $5,250,519 on a “worldwide anti-war media campaign,” the details of which would only “be published after our victory” due to “security reasons.”

Ukrainian government officials and private sector actors involved in the operation of Aid for Ukraine have scoffed at suggestions of impropriety regarding its use, but have only raised further questions with their denials.

Oleksandr Bornyakov of Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation declared that Aid for Ukraine simply used FTX to “convert donations into fiat in March.” The CEO of Everstake, the “validator” company that in theory guaranteed crypto funds donated via Aid for Ukraine reached Kiev’s Ministry of Defense, also thanked “every crypto holder for donating…in those early day [sic], when every cent and every minute was crucial.” 

Taken in tandem, these comments suggest Aid for Ukraine was set up purely to receive donations in the initial stages of the war, and the $60 million figure represents sums received and converted in the weeks immediately following the launch of the initiative. This interpretation is reinforced by an Everstake staffer’s presentation at a cryptocurrency conference at Web Summit on November 1st, on the subject of “raising [over] $60m in crypto for Ukraine.”

But an Internet Archive capture of Aid for Ukraine on April 1st adds to the confusion, showing that two-and-a-half-weeks after the initiative launched, the webpage was updated to claim “over $70 million” had been raised from crypto donors. This was revised down to “over $60 million” five days later. 

More strangely, Aid for Ukraine records show that from the time of the initiative’s launch to April 14th, a total of $45,103,538 was spent. This means just $9,470,084 was spent between April 14 and July 7th, a period in which the war developed into a “bloody war of attrition” according to The Guardian.

This leaves a gap of at least $5.5 million in the money Aid for Ukraine claimed to have raised in its initial weeks, and the funds it says it distributed in Ukraine. 

The disparity was confirmed in a tweet by the official Aid for Ukraine Twitter account, posted on the evening of November 15th, which stated that “out of $60 million received, $54 million have already been spent on Ukraine’s humanitarian and military needs.” 

This implies that no further funds of any size were received after early April, and the total has remained static ever since, despite the resource being open for donations. Which would be highly unusual.

The government of Ukraine, FTX, and Everstake all now have serious questions to answer. Namely, why the funds purportedly raised appear to have decreased in a span of a few days, why no donations have been received since then on the Aid for Ukraine webpage or its new website, how much has been donated since the alleged initial influx, and where did the rest of the money go?

Ukraine: a black hole for Western aid

Stories of potential financial impropriety by Ukrainian officials and the country’s military are invariably ignored or outright buried by the Western media. An August exposé by the Kyiv Independent documented wide-ranging abuses by the leadership of a wing of the International Legion, including sexual harassment, looting, threatening soldiers at gunpoint and sending them unprepared on reckless missions. Though the Kyiv Independent often influences Western media’s coverage of the Ukraine conflict, this story was completely ignored in mainstream quarters.

That same month, CBS broadcast an investigative feature revealing that only 30 percent of Western arm shipments to Ukraine ever reach the frontline. Due to intense backlash from the Pentagon and other powerful sources, CBS temporarily pulled its own documentary and an accompanying promotional trailer and article from the web. The feature has since been “updated” to claim that “the situation has significantly improved” since filming, and “a much larger quantity now gets where it’s supposed to go.”

When it comes to Ukraine, Democrats at the highest levels are also immensely skilled at burying embarrassing stories. In December 2015, Joe Biden coerced Kiev’s then-leader Petro Poroshenko into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin as a condition for the US underwriting a $1 billion IMF loan to Ukraine.

“I’m going to be leaving here in six hours. If [Shokin] is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden threatened. 

With Shokin’s firing, the experienced lawyer’s ongoing probe into the energy giant Burisma ended as well. Which meant that Burisma’s most famous board member, Hunter Biden, the son of then-US Vice President’s son, eluded official scrutiny. 

Now, a politically connected crypto-billionaire who used a secret financial “back door” to fleece customers of ungodly sums of money has become the latest character in the saga of shady US aid to Ukraine. And though the collapse of his FTX firm is front page news, mainstream outlets are studiously avoiding the Ukraine angle.

A war Russia set to win

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The Europeans have been nicely played by the Americans

Breached: With the attack on the Crimean Bridge, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has crossed a red line that Moscow had warned him against. Reuters

By MK Bhadrakumar

Source: The Tribune of India

Two massive terrorist strikes misfired spectacularly and a terrible beauty is born in the Ukraine war. These two carefully planned attacks in quick succession — on Nord Stream gas pipelines and Crimean Bridge — were intended as a knockout blow to Russia. According to President Vladimir Putin, people ‘who want to finally sever ties between Russia and the EU, weaken Europe’ are behind the Nord Stream blasts. He named the US, Ukraine and Poland as ‘beneficiaries’.

Last Wednesday, Russia’s domestic intelligence service FSB identified Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, as the mastermind behind the Crimean attack. The New York Times and Washington Post also pointed fingers at Kiev, quoting ‘sources’. While Nord Stream-1 has been crippled, one of the strings of Nord Stream-2 remains intact. Putin said last week that the pipeline could be restored and Russia could deliver about 27 billion cubic metres of gas. ‘The ball is on the side of the European Union, if they want — let’s turn on the tap,’ he said.

But mum’s the word from Brussels. It is a profoundly embarrassing moment for the EU. The triumphalism has vanished as Europe is threatened by years of recession caused by the blowback from sanctions against Russia, where the US insisted on the cut off of energy ties with Moscow. The EU has now become a captive market for Big Oil and is left to buy LNG from the US at the asking price, which is six to seven times higher than the domestic price in the US. (Contracted price for long-term Russian supply for Germany used to be about $280 per 1,000 cubic metres as against the current market price hovering around $2,000.)

Plainly put, the Europeans have been nicely played by the Americans. India should take note of the US’ sense of entitlement. Basically, the Biden administration created a contrived energy crisis whose real aim is war profiteering.

The Crimean Bridge attack of October 8 is much more serious. Zelenskyy has crossed a red line that Moscow had repeatedly warned him against. Putin has disclosed that there have also been three terrorist attacks against the Kursk NPP. Russians will settle for nothing less than the ouster of the Zelenskyy regime.

Russia’s retaliation against Ukraine’s ‘critical infrastructure’, something Moscow refrained from so far, has serious implications. Since October 9, Russia has begun systematically targeting Ukraine’s power system and railways. Noted Russian military expert Vladislav Shurygin told Izvestia that if this tempo was kept up for a week or so, it ‘will disrupt the entire logistics of the Ukrainian military — system for transporting personnel, military equipment, ammunition, related cargo, as well as the functioning of military and repair plants.’

The Americans are cocooned in a surreal world of their self-serving narrative that Russia ‘lost’ the war. In the real world, though, Ivan Tertel, KGB chief in Belarus, who has an insider view of Moscow, said last Tuesday that with Russia boosting its troop strength in the war zone — 3 lakh troops who have been mobilised plus 70,000 volunteers — and the deployment of advanced weaponry, ‘the military operation will enter a key phase. According to our estimates, a turning point will come in the period from November of this year to February of next year.’

Policy-makers and strategists in Delhi should make a careful note of the timeline. The bottom line is, Russia is looking for an all-out victory and will not settle for anything less than a friendly government in Kiev. Western politicians, including Biden, understand that there is nothing stopping the Russians now. The US’ weapon kitty is running dry as Kiev keeps asking for more.

When asked whether he’d meet Biden at the G20 in Bali, Putin derisively remarked on Friday, ‘He (Biden) should be asked whether he is ready to hold such negotiations with me or not. To be honest, I don’t see any need, by and large. There is no platform for any negotiations for the time being.’

However, Washington has not yet thrown in the towel and the Biden administration remains obsessed with exhausting the Russian military — even at the cost of Ukraine’s destruction. And, for the Russians too, there is still much to be worked out on the battlefield: the oppressed Russian populations in Odessa (which suffered unspeakable atrocities from the neo-Nazis), Mykolaiv, Zaporizhya, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov are expecting ‘liberation’. It’s a highly emotive issue for Russia. Again, the overarching agenda of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine must be taken to its logical conclusion.

When all that is over, Putin knows Biden will not even want to meet him. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban said last week, ‘Anyone who seriously believes that the war can be ended through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations lives in another world. Reality looks different. In reality, such issues can only be discussed between Washington and Moscow. Today, Ukraine is able to fight only because it receives military assistance from the United States…

‘At the same time, I do not see President Biden as the person who would really be suitable for such serious negotiations. President Biden has gone too far. Suffice it to recall his statements to Russian President Putin.’

India should expect the defeat of the US and NATO, which completes the transition to a multipolar world order. Sadly, Indian elites are yet to purge their ‘unipolar predicament’. Europe, including Britain, is devastated and there is palpable discontent over the US’s ‘transatlantic leadership’. Indo-Pacific strategy is hopelessly adrift. New power centres are emerging in India’s extended neighbourhood, as the OPEC’s rebuff to Washington shows. A profound adjustment is needed in the Indian strategic calculus.

Ukraine: Somewhere between Afghanization and Syrianization

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Ukraine is finished as a nation – neither side will rest in this war. The only question is whether it will be an Afghan or Syrian style finale.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Pepe Escobar

Source: The Cradle

One year after the astounding US humiliation in Kabul – and on the verge of another serious comeuppance in Donbass – there is reason to believe Moscow is wary of Washington seeking vengeance: in the form of the ‘Afghanization’ of Ukraine.

With no end in sight to western weapons and finance flowing into Kiev, it must be recognized that the Ukrainian battle is likely to disintegrate into yet another endless war. Like the Afghan jihad in the 1980s which employed US-armed and funded guerrillas to drag Russia into its depths, Ukraine’s backers will employ those war-tested methods to run a protracted battle that can spill into bordering Russian lands.

Yet this US attempt at crypto-Afghanization will at best accelerate the completion of what Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu describes as the “tasks” of its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. For Moscow right now, that road leads all the way to Odessa.

It didn’t have to be this way. Until the recent assassination of Darya Dugina at Moscow’s gates, the battlefield in Ukraine was in fact under a ‘Syrianization’ process.

Like the foreign proxy war in Syria this past decade, frontlines around significant Ukrainian cities had roughly stabilized. Losing on the larger battlefields, Kiev had increasingly moved to employ terrorist tactics. Neither side could completely master the immense war theater at hand. So the Russian military opted to keep minimal forces in battle – contrary to the strategy it employed in 1980s Afghanistan.

Let’s remind ourselves of a few Syrian facts: Palmyra was liberated in March 2016, then lost and retaken in 2017. Aleppo was liberated only in December 2016. Deir Ezzor in September 2017. A slice of northern Hama in December and January 2018. The outskirts of Damascus in the Spring of 2018. Idlib – and significantly, over 25 percent of Syrian territory – are still not liberated. That tells a lot about rhythm in a war theater.

The Russian military never made a conscious decision to interrupt the multi-channel flow of western weapons to Kiev. Methodically destroying those weapons once they’re in Ukrainian territory – with plenty of success – is another matter. The same applies to smashing mercenary networks.

Moscow is well aware that any negotiation with those pulling the strings in Washington – and dictating all terms to puppets in Brussels and Kiev – is futile. The fight in Donbass and beyond is a do or die affair.

So the battle will go on, destroying what’s left of Ukraine, just as it destroyed much of Syria. The difference is that economically, much more than in Syria, what’s left of Ukraine will plunge into a black void. Only territory under Russian control will be rebuilt, and that includes, significantly, the bulk of Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure.

What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine.

Going forward, by next year the Russians will be applying themselves to cutting off Kiev from NATO weapons supplies. As that unfolds, the Anglo-Americans will eventually move whatever puppet regime remains to Lviv. And Kiev terrorism – conducted by Bandera worshippers – will continue to be the new normal in the capital.

The Kazakh double game

By now it’s abundantly clear this is not a mere war of territorial conquest. It’s certainly part of a War of Economic Corridors – as the US spares no effort to sabotage and smash the multiple connectivity channels of Eurasia’s integration projects, be they Chinese-led (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) or Russian-led (Eurasian Economic Union, EAEU).

Just like the proxy war in Syria remade large swathes of West Asia (witness, for instance, Erdogan about to meet Assad), the fight in Ukraine, in a microcosm, is a war for the reconfiguration of the current world order, where Europe is a mere self-inflicted victim in a minor subplot. The Big Picture is the emergence of multipolarity.

The proxy war in Syria lasted a decade, and it’s not over yet. The same may happen to the proxy war in Ukraine. As it stands, Russia has taken an area that is roughly equivalent to Hungary and Slovakia combined. That’s still far from “task” fulfillment – and it’s bound to go on until Russia has taken all the land right up to the Dnieper as well as Odessa, connecting it to the breakaway Republic of Transnistria.

It’s enlightening to see how important Eurasian actors are reacting to such geopolitical turbulence. And that brings us to the cases of Kazakhstan and Turkey.

The Telegram channel Rybar (with over 640k followers) and hacker group Beregini revealed in an investigation that Kazakhstan was selling weapons to Ukraine, which translates as de facto treason against their own Russian allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Consider too that Kazakhstan is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the EAEU, the two hubs of the Eurasian-led multipolar order.

As a consequence of the scandal, Kazakhstan was forced to officially announce the suspension of all weapons exports until the end of 2023.

It began with hackers unveiling how Technoexport – a Kazakh company – was selling armed personnel carriers, anti-tank systems and munitions to Kiev via Jordanian intermediaries, under the orders of the United Kingdom. The deal itself was supervised by the British military attaché in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital.

Nur-Sultan predictably tried to dismiss the allegations, arguing that Technoexport had not asked for export licenses. That was essentially false: the Rybar team discovered that Technoexport instead used Blue Water Supplies, a Jordanian firm, for those. And the story gets even juicier. All the contract documents ended up being found in the computers of Ukrainian intel.

Moreover, the hackers found out about another deal involving Kazspetsexport, via a Bulgarian buyer, for the sale of Kazakh Su-27s, airplane turbines and Mi-24 helicopters. These would have been delivered to the US, but their final destination was Ukraine.

The icing on this Central Asian cake is that Kazakhstan also sells significant amounts of Russian – not Kazakh – oil to Kiev.

So it seems that Nur-Sultan, perhaps unofficially, somehow contributes to the ‘Afghanization’ in the war in Ukraine. No diplomatic leaks confirm it, of course, but bets can be made Putin had a few things to say about that to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in their recent – cordial – meeting.

The Sultan’s balancing act

Turkey is a way more complex case. Ankara is not a member of the SCO, the CSTO or the EAEU. It is still hedging its bets, calculating on which terms it will join the high-speed rail of Eurasian integration. And yet, via several schemes, Ankara allows Moscow to evade the avalanche of western sanctions and embargoes.

Turkish businesses – literally all of them with close connections to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) – are making a killing, and relishing their new role as crossroads warehouse between Russia and the west. It’s an open boast in Istanbul that what Russia cannot buy from Germany or France they buy “from us.” And in fact several EU companies are in on it.

Ankara’s balancing act is as sweet as a good baklava. It gathers    economic support from a very important partner right in the middle of the endless, very serious Turkish economic debacle. They agree on nearly everything: Russian gas, S-400 missile systems, the building of the Russian nuclear power plant, tourism – Istanbul is crammed with Russians – Turkish fruits and vegetables.

Ankara-Moscow employ sound textbook geopolitics. They play it openly, in full transparence. That does not mean they are allies. It’s just pragmatic business between states. For instance, an economic response may alleviate a geopolitical problem, and vice-versa.

Obviously the collective west has completely forgotten how that normal state-to-state behavior works. It’s pathetic. Turkey gets “denounced” by the west as traitorous – as much as China.

Of course Erdogan also needs to play to the galleries, so every once in a while he says that Crimea should be retaken by Kiev. After all, his companies also do business with Ukraine – Bayraktar drones and otherwise.

And then there’s proselytizing: Crimea remains theoretically ripe for Turkish influence, where Ankara may exploit the notions of pan-Islamism and mostly pan-Turkism, capitalizing on the historical relations between the peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.

Is Moscow worried? Not really. As for those Bayraktar TB2s sold to Kiev, they will continue to be relentlessly reduced to ashes. Nothing personal. Just business.

Policy By Other Means

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By Helmholtz Smith

Source: Moon of Alabama

“Hybrid war”. Western propagandists love the expression “The bad guys are doing nasty underhand things to counter our clean-cut decent and wholly justified activities” but they are just making noise. As Clausewitz knew, however, there is an actual meaning:

We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses (…) for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.

In this sense, all intelligently-conducted wars are “hybrid wars” advancing on many levels to achieve the “political object” by “other means”.

What is the “object”?Moscow knows that NATO/USA is the real enemy and that the wretched Ukrainians are its puppets and their looted and worn-out country is the arena. Putin himself has said that NATO’s threat to Russia must be stopped. NATO, and the European Union with which it is closely linked, must be exposed as useless, actively harmful to their members and their hostility defeated.

NATO, which loves to pose as peaceful (despite the five or six wars it’s started in the last quarter-century), cannot or will not understand Russia’s point of view. Moscow will shove its face in it. Putin says that he has many times tried other means (Munich 2007 being one of the earliest). Those means having failed, he’s using these means this time.

Far-ranging aims require a multi-front attack. Let us consider the fronts.

MILITARY FRONT. Putin has explained the aims – denazification and demilitarization Maybe they could have been achieved through negotiation – although years of Kiev ignoring the Minsk Agreements suggest not – but that didn’t happen. Maybe Moscow hoped that its feint on Kiev might prevent a bloody slog but that didn’t happen either. And so the battle of annihilation is on – Ukraine’s military power is being smashed and the Nazis killed.

It’s taking a long time for several reasons. Imagine the Western Front trench line but with three times as long to build it and concrete rather than sandbags and wood. Russia and its allies attacked with smaller forces. The allied forces are moving slowly to reduce their casualties and because they are in no particular hurry. The Ukrainians are resisting very tenaciously and NATO is egging them on. The Ukrainian forces are being methodically slaughtered, allied casualties are a fraction of that because “artillery conquers and infantry occupies”.

DIPLOMATIC FRONT. The West likes claim that Russia is isolated. But, in terms of population, the so-called “International Community” represents only 15 to 20 percent of the world and the Russians are well-received elsewhere. Here’s Lavrov very much in the thick of things at ASEAN, in Africa (note media attempts to spin it away) and the Arab world.

Russia isn’t isolated at all and its diplomacy is having effect. US diplomacy, on the other hand, is just threats – Africa is warned, China threatened.

ECONOMIC FRONT. When Moscow began its “special military operation”, it expected that Nordstream 2 would be stopped because it knew the West was stuck on the idea that the Russian economy is dependent on selling energy to Europe – “Russia cannot afford to cut its sales of oil“. Moscow had its response ready – hostile countries have to pay in rubles.

What’s Europe’s response? Hurt Putin by not showering. Don’t, he doesn’t care. Of course the price went up and Moscow has probably completely funded the operation out of the increased revenue. The West is discovering – and, advised as it is by people like Aslund, to its astonishment – that “the country that doesn’t make anything” is a big producer of lots of essential things.

Moscow knew Washington would stick Europeans with the check – just as Washington will fight to the last Ukrainian, it will sanction until the last European freezes. The economic war is doing more damage to Russia’s enemies. They will either figure this out and change their behavior or they won’t and they’ll suffer. Moscow waits knowing that it wins either way.

PROPAGANDA FRONT. It is a common sentiment that Moscow is losing the propaganda war but I’m not convinced. Propaganda has to have some basis in truth – instead we have the martyrs of Snake Island miraculously reviving, the ghostly Ghost of Kiev, million-man armies disappearing, Kherson counter attacks put off again, maternity hospital bombings exposed by the bombed-out mothers, bodies thoughtfully left out to be seen, Russia begging China, Iran or North Korea for weapons, another “game-changer” weapon.

Russia was running out of ammunition in March, April, June and July. You have to be pretty comatose to still believe this. The propagandists have lost their skills. And reality leaks out through the holes in these flimsy tales. Witness the reception of the Amnesty International report that Ukrainian tactics are “putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas“.

“Putin’s propagandists” chides The Times; “cannot be tolerated” says Zelensky; “Russian propaganda” as she quits. No news to us who have seen Azov fighters sheltering behind civilians in Mariupol, weapons hidden in shopping centers, troops setting up in schools. But it’s a shocker to believers of the Western narrative (especially Vogue readers!).

Skeptics know that the difference between a conspiracy theory and reported truth is a few months. In June it was Russian disinformation that corrupt officials were selling Western weapons, in August it’s news. Zelensky a hero then, corrupt now. Expect more “disinformation” transforming into truth.

JUDO. Putin is well known to be a judo master. Judo is the art of using the opponent’s movements against it. That’s what we are seeing. On every front Russia has time on its side and escalation dominance. The impotence of NATO and the EU – in fact the actual damage that membership in either brings – is more perceptible every day as winter approaches.

Europe’s, the West’s, predominance stood on three legs. The power to compel others. The captivating halo of success. The wealth to fund the other two. Watch this little video – not much respect there. I expect we will see more vignettes like this.

The statue is hollow, the Mandate of Heaven is shifting.