The “relatively civilized” people should ally themselves with the “uncivilized” ones

March 04, 2022

Source

By Aram Mirzaei

The Western psyops is truly at its full capacity right now. As the Saker has reported himself for many days now, they’ve targeted Russia everywhere and in every way possible. They’ve completely taken control of the narrative and are basically on a witch hunt for those deemed “deviant”. The Western media is rampant with “reporting” and “analyses” where all these “experts” are competing in the ‘trash-talking Russia” challenge. Some say Putin has gone mad and has “lost touch with reality”, while others claim that he has a master plan to conquer all of the former Eastern Bloc countries. But in the end they all agree that he is evil, that he should be killed and/or overthrown. The other day, I saw two journalists interviewing a man who had volunteered to travel to Ukraine to fight Russians, as they were wishing him “all the best.” You’d think this is a joke if you didn’t live through it yourself.

A friend of mine from a European country told me the other day: “I feel like a criminal these days, carrying a deep dark secret, because I’ve committed something worse than murder… I support Russia! In this extremely Russophobic country, the pharmacies have run out of iodine pills, because people have stocked up on them, expecting a nuclear strike by “big bad Putin” any day now. People are hurrying to the ATMs for cash and preparing shelters for WWIII.” This is how the West and its powerful media have created fear among the Western people.

We’re being bombarded day and night by lies, lies and more lies about the ongoing conflict. The Saker is correct in his argument that Russia has been defeated in the information war. There are probably differing opinions on why this happened and one could argue that Moscow was probably a bit surprised to see the extent of the psyop. Foreign Minister Lavrov himself said that “Russia was ready for Western sanctions but that it did not expect the West to target its athletes, journalists and representatives of the cultural sector.”

He isn’t exactly lying here. Never in my life have I seen such hatred spewed on a mass level, as if the entire world has gone crazy. Such a coordinated campaign cannot have been executed without thorough planning, which I believe they’ve been doing for months, if not years.
In any case, the Western media have been quick to proclaim that the “international community” has condemned Russia for its “invasion” of Ukraine. We all know by now that the “international community” includes only the “civilized” and perhaps some “relatively civilized” countries. I’ll come back to the term “relatively civilized” later.

So what about the average person in the West then? I can mostly speak about the country I currently reside in, but so far, judging from what I’ve seen, the “civilized” Westerners have unequivocally condemned and showed their hatred for president Putin and Russia, because, of course, they take a moral stance against “unacceptable Russian imperialism.” Such things belong to the “20th century” and “countries these days don’t just invade other countries”. The other day, I heard co-workers say that they don’t fear soaring gas and oil prices due to the sanctions, because they’d “rather go back to horse and chariot, than miss out on the chance to put those damn Russians in their place.”

This is the hatred that they have against Russia, a people they consider to be “relatively civilized”, just like they consider Ukrainians to be the same. This is why Moscow’s policy of appeasement is useless. It is Moscow that should take lessons from history and look at Munich 1938, not the Westerners, as some silly pundits claim. They should also take lesson from the Islamic Republic’s tough stance against the West, despite being a much smaller country than Russia, and vastly behind in terms of economic, military, industrial and technological advancements and achievements.

The Islamic Republic has never even had the chance to be part of SWIFT system, a tool that the Westerners have used against Russia recently, supposedly a “disaster for Russian economy” now that they have “kicked Russia out.” Iran has been forced to do trades through the black market and the use of cash in suitcases and bags for decades! This is what “maximum pressure” forced Tehran into. Why shouldn’t Russia survive this? It is after all “relatively civilized” compared to the “uncivilized” Muslim Iranians.

The phrase “relatively civilized” was, as most people know, recently used in an interview by a correspondent of one of the American media channels. Note the words “the Ukrainians are relatively civilized”, which simply means that in the eyes of the Americans, Ukrainians are still “relatively civilized” and not fully “civilized”.
This means that Iraqis are Afghans dying is not strange, because they’re not civilized anyway. The “stupid Muslims” in Iraq, Syria and Yemen whose blood don’t matter and killing them en masse is permissible because they are subhuman.

The Western people (save for a very small minority) do not give a damn about the fact that the US occupies Syria and Iraq, that it has waged illegal wars across West Asia and Afghanistan, and slaughtered millions in their path. Washington is partaking in a starvation campaign against millions of Yemenis, does anyone care about that?

Did anyone sanction the US when it invaded Iraq illegally? Even with facts about the total fabrication of evidence for Iraq’s WMD possession, facts that are acknowledged by Western governments and pundits today, and yet nobody says a thing. Did anyone cancel, let alone even condemn the US when it downed an Iranian passenger flight, killing some 300 people and then gave medals to those troops who fired the missile?

For God’s sakes, at least the Iranians had the decency to apologize when they accidentally downed the Ukrainian-bound passenger flight in 2020. They didn’t humiliate the victims by giving the troops medals, instead, they actually charged them with criminal neglect and incompetence. But Iranians are the “uncivilized” people here, of course.

In my opinion, Moscow has tried too hard the diplomatic way, over the Donbass conflict. I’m sure the people in Moscow already know this, but negotiations with the West is useless. If anything the failure of the JCPOA and Washington’s shameless withdrawal should be a lesson for Moscow, that Washington and its band of dogs are liars, they are unreliable and won’t stand by their words and promises. The West has proven time and time again that it only understands the language of force.

I believe as several other analysts have already stated, that Washington’s goals have been to draw Russia into a war, which it succeeded in doing, and the second goal has been to kick Russia out of Europe-Washington has been pretty successful with this endeavour too, for now.

So Moscow must now look to those who will not view Russia and Russians as “relatively civilized.” The “uncivilized” world, save for those affected by the brain disease that exposure to Western media results in, mostly support Moscow’s operation in Ukraine. They recognize Moscow’s legitimate security concerns over NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders. Moscow’s challenge and resistance to the US empire is important for the countries or the “uncivilized” world too, because it offers them a way out of the West’s stranglehold over them. Moscow has used its military might for fighting terrorists, first in Chechnya, then Syria and now in Ukraine, helping the people achieve freedom from Western backed terrorists. This has not just passed by the “uncivil” peoples of the world.

Many countries in the so called Global South have refused to condemn and sanction Russia. Not even NATO member Turkey, or Brazil’s anglophile president went through with the sanctions. Tehran and Beijing (both super uncivilized) have blamed the West for the crisis and  Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has personally mentioned Washington’s cancerous role in the conflict, describing Washington as “both creating crises and feeding off of them.”

So what can we learn from this conflict? Moscow, and hopefully Tehran as well as Beijing should learn that just like in Ukraine, where there are those who believe that its a privilege to be called “Westerner” and “European”, there are such people in all three of these countries as well. The governments of Russia, Iran and China must now figure out ways to block these psyops from affecting their own peoples, or elschine they’ll be facing the same threats. One such way is to counter the “Western unity” by showing “Eastern unity” in this time of crisis. They must show the world that Western sanctions don’t affect them, and that the “international community” is nothing but the US empire of lies and its vassals.

Let’s hope that this truly was Russia’s final review of relations with the West and that Moscow now fully turns to the “uncivilized” East.

War in Ukraine: “The whole world is with us” – and, with whom is “us”, with Kiev or with Moscow?

March 03, 2022

by Yuri Podolyaka for this YT channel

Source

translated by N.

Hello, my dear listeners.

Today is March 2 and today’s first material will not be a review of the war front situation, because in the last few hours I just have not had a chance to get a whole lot of information. There is some information, but I will cover it in the next review.

Today, and also in the future, in the morning reviews, I want to look at what is happening around the conflict in Ukraine.

And, one of the most important issues is – which countries of the world have supported Russia on this issue and which have not, because this question is actually critical for Ukraine. And not only for Ukraine, for it is unquestionably very important for Russia too, because the prevailing opinion in Ukraine is that “the whole world is with us”.

So, let’s take a look – who is this “whole world” and to what extent is it with them?

Well, it is obvious that the USA, Canada and most of the European countries are really with them, at least so they say, but then there are other countries, like Hungary, for example, which express ambivalence. On one hand, they support sanctions, but then on the other hand, regarding military assistance to Ukraine, Hungary said a firm “No”. Furthermore, it will not even allow any transportation of any goods across its territory and borders.

Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have taken a special position as well, certainly, because the position of the Serbs is very clear and resolute – they are totally behind Russia.

Then, there is the USA and Europe – with them it is all quite clear, as with Japan, Australia and all the closest political partners of the USA. After that – silence.

All other significant countries, in one form or another, have expressed support for Russia. Firstly, it is very visible in Latin America, where Brazil, Argentina, and yesterday Mexico – everyone, the main countries, all stated in unison that they will not support sanctions against Russia. Understandably, besides Columbia and several other countries, the more economically developed countries of that region, however, have stated that they will not support sanctions against Russia.

South Africa, the only country of the African continent that has some political weight, also took the same position. And, almost forgot – also Egypt. It is also against the sanctions. Well, it’s understandable why – because if Egypt says “yes” to the sanctions, it would stand to lose all the Russian tourists. Also, Turkey said it was against the sanctions against Russia. And, so it follows, all the countries that orient themselves around Turkey, also are against the sanctions. Even Israel’s position in this question looks very, very ambivalent.

Israel really, really does not want to quarrel with Russia. And it’s clear that Israel will continue to maneuver till the very last moment. For the leadership of Israel, the final knife in the back was the killing of an Israeli citizen by the nationalist Ukrainian soldiers, during the attempt to evacuate him, when he was mistaken for a Kadyrov Chechen mercenary associated with the pro-Russian separatists.

Also, none of the Middle Eastern countries, at least none of the significant ones, have expressed support for the sanctions against Russia. The United Arab Emirates were against, Saudi Arabia was against – moreover, it stated that it would strictly adhere to the policies of OPEC-Plus. The Americans had implored them to increase production.

It is also clear that Iran is behind Russia. So, the axis that Russia has developed in the Middle East is working and, in fact, working strictly like clockwork.

India also did not support the sanctions, although yesterday there was communication that the Bank of India was looking into the matter of halting some transactions with Russian banks but so far the matter is unresolved.

At the national level, India is saying that it is against the sanctions.

Understandably, China’s position is clear and unequivocal – China is Russia’s ally.

But, an even more interesting situation has emerged in the post-Soviet space. It is obvious and predictable that the Baltic states are supportive of the sanctions, but with the others it is not nearly as obvious. It could have been expected with the participant countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, that are part of the CSTO. Naturally, all of them have supported Russia. However, two countries which Ukraine depended on heavily, Moldova and Georgia, did not support the sanctions. Even Georgia, did not support Ukraine in the sanctions against Russia. Also, Moldova – I remind you that today Moldova has a pro-Europe government. So, it appears that in the post-Soviet space, none of the countries, except the three little Baltic limitrophe states, supported the sanctions against Russia. Even the ones that Ukraine really counted on – Moldova and Georgia.

This raises a very legitimate question – so, “who is the whole world with”?

Is the “whole world” – the USA plus the better part of Europe, the sum total population of which comprises less than 20% of the world’s population, and represents less than about 50% of the world GDP? Again, this figure includes and is based on fake, digital GDP numbers, which exist only on paper.

Therefore, we can see that on a diplomatic level, Russia prepared for this war very well.

Russia’s alliances and her allies work. It also means that all the countries of the world understand perfectly well what the battle that has unfurled in Ukraine is all about.

It is not a battle between Ukraine and Russia. Of course, not.

It is a battle of the USA against Russia and China – the destruction of that world where the Anglo-Saxon dominated countries are the leaders. It is perfectly understandable, why most of the countries that are not part of this European and North American bloc, wish to see the victory of China and Russia.

So, unfortunately I have to disappoint President Zelensky and the Ukrainian nationalists, who believe “the whole world is with us”. No, far from it.

In fact, the greater part of the world is not with you. Even Moldova and Georgia are not with you. That is what I wanted to say in this release. So, that is all for now on this subject matter. Please wait for the review on all fronts. I think it will come out somewhere around noon to 1:00pm.

See you soon.

Iran Opposes War in Ukraine: Ready to Assist with Relief Efforts

March 3, 2022 

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian renewed on Wednesday the call for a political settlement of the conflict pitting Russia against Ukraine, saying Tehran is ready to cooperate with the International Red Cross in providing humanitarian assistance.

In a phone call on Wednesday, Amir Abdollahian and President of the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] Peter Maurer discussed aid delivery in border areas of Ukraine and the humanitarian situation in Yemen and Afghanistan as well as ways to boost bilateral relations.

The Iranian foreign minister stressed the importance of resolving the Ukraine crisis politically and said, “War is not a solution.”

Right after the conflict broke out, Iran began making efforts to support its citizens in Ukraine and set up a special committee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to improve the humanitarian situation, he said.

The top Iranian diplomat called for strengthening cooperation between the ICRC and the Iranian Red Crescent Society [IRCS] in this regard.

Maurer, for his part, briefed the Iranian foreign minister on his talks with the Russian and Ukrainian officials about the dispatch of humanitarian aid, the exchange of dead soldiers and the provision of access to prisoners of war.

The ICRC president said Ukraine is grappling with a tough and critical situation.

Amir Abdollahian and Maurer agreed that medical and relief teams of the IRCS and the ICRC would be deployed in border areas to help the displaced.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi explained why Tehran abstained from voting on an anti-Russian UN General Assembly resolution.

“We believe that the current text of the resolution before the General Assembly lacks impartiality and realistic mechanisms for resolving the crisis through peaceful means. Furthermore, not all member states of the United Nations were given the opportunity to engage in negotiations on the text of the resolution,” Takht Ravanchi said on Wednesday.

Takht Ravanchi said Iran is pursuing the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine with grave concern and reiterated Tehran’s principled stance on the need for a peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with international law and for all parties to fully respect the well-established provisions of the UN Charter and international humanitarian law.

“We emphasize that sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states must be fully respected and safety and security of all civilians must be guaranteed,” the Iranian diplomat said.

He stressed the importance of addressing the root causes of such crises in order to find long-term and sustainable solutions to them, saying, “We note that the current complexities in the fragile region of Eastern Europe have been exacerbated by the provocative actions and decisions of the US and NATO. The security concerns of Russia must be respected.”

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The importance of the Russian peacekeeping operation in Ukraine

March 02, 2022

Source

By Batko Milacic

Ukraine is the core of the formation of the Russian state and nation. And much more. In modern circumstances, the question of Ukraine is a question of Russia’s survival. Ukraine is the country that decides on Russia’s destiny because it is in the lobby of the Kremlin. In the modern conditions of modern weapons, it is a springboard for the dismemberment of Russia. These plans have existed for a long time and are even in the scientific literature.

The main goals of the Russian peacekeeping operation are the protection of the Russian people in Ukraine, Ukraine’s commitment to neutrality, and the decentralization of the state in order to prevent an anti-Russian policy in the future in Kiev. Also, President Putin made it clear – that one of the goals is to denazify Ukraine.

For years, we have witnessed the strengthening of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine, and it is not appropriate for a country like Russia, which has a fight against Nazism in its history, to have a country in its neighborhood that is pro-Nazi. And Ukraine was like that. And imagine what the impact of Ukraine would be if it remained on that course as Russia’s neighbor. The geopolitical goals are recognized in the geopolitics of Russia written in the books, and that is to expel the United States from Eurasia as a whole. That seems like a distant and impossible goal to us, but with the victory in the Second World War, the United States occupied the macro-bridgehead in Europe and after the Cold War, they tried to expand it. They succeeded in that after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reached the borders of Russia itself – Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Now they are trying to expand that bridgehead even more. The Russians believe that the United States is a foreign body on the territory of Eurasia, under the formula “why would a non-Eurasian power rule Eurasia, where there is one Russia, China, India but also Germany and France.

So goals can be much longer term.

On the other hand, for US, this is a matter of confirming credibility. After several defeats, Washington is facing a new challenge – in Ukraine itself. If Russia succeeds, the United States will be in a cycle of defeat.

Many countries will try to be neutral and give general commitments, their generalized words. But China, like any great power, says one thing – that the security interests of Russia, like any other state, must be respected. In translation, that NATO’s expansion to the east must be stopped.

After independence, Ukraine insisted on decommunization. From the demolition of the monuments, to the change of its orientation and policy. But only to those limits to stay within its borders which were determined by the – communists!

The situation is similar to the Western Balkans, where the Yugoslav communists did the same thing – established inconsistent borders. This has been a problem in the post-Yugoslav space for three decades. And the same is done in the former Soviet Union.

That ideology was on the line to make Russia as weak as possible, to deprive it of as much territory and economic resources as possible, to bring it into a bad geostrategic position in the sense that all its exits to the seas would be called into question. That is how Russia experienced the loss of Crimea and Sevastopol, which was of vital importance for Russia, during the Khrushchev era.

So, if Ukraine wants decommunization – now Russia will not go partially but to the end, that is a strong message from Russia president. It can also be interpreted in the Balkan way.

Crimea is something that Russia fought bloodily for. Sevastopol is an immeasurably important base. Imagine that Crimea remained in Ukraine and that with Ukraine’s entry into NATO, Crimea became a NATO base. The question is whether the West would then recognize Russia even as a regional power.

This crisis will also hit the European Union hard. In the long run, the EU will be in immeasurable damage. It has no energy and gas. Even before the war crisis, Europe was in an energy crisis. Imagine the crisis it will be in now.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 were built with a strong geopolitical connotation. If it weren’t for that, if there wasn’t a lot of geopolitics, they would have been built by land through the Baltic republics to Germany. But geopolitical interest was recognized. And that was recognized by Germany, not Russia.

The threat is that the gas pipeline routes will be cut if they go through the countries that Donald Rumsveld said were the “new Europe”.

It was in Germany’s interest to connect directly with Russia. This caused great fear in US and the Atlantic countries, because they are afraid of the Moscow-Berlin axis. They are afraid of German discipline and capital on the one hand, and Russian resources, human values and the territory on the other.

If an axis is made here, then Atlantic countries have nothing to look for in Europe. That is why the first American reaction was to disrupt the gas pipelines in all possible ways, to close them if necessary. But, without those gas pipelines, Europe, and primarily Germany, would have nothing to expect.

We are far from the Third World War, but the geopolitical repackaging of the world is underway. It is not at its beginning. It started with the empowerment of China, and then Russia. Russia has shown that it will not tolerate the presence of Washington`s vassals in its environment, which will not respect Russian geopolitical interests, but will pursue a pro-Washington policy.

It is enough to imagine that the same thing that US is doing in Ukraine, that Russia is doing in Canada. Hypothetically, imagine that Canada is an anti-American country-exponent of Russia. Washington’s reactions would be lightning fast. It is enough to remember the Cuban crisis.

The Russian message is clear. The world must be repackaged and neoclassical spheres of interest must be formed. Primarily on the Eurasian mainland. All with the aim of establishing long-term peace and prosperity

Author: Batko Milacic

‘Israeli’-made Weapons Are Heading to Ukraine

March 01, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

As NATO member states announce that they are shipping modern weapons to Ukraine, ‘Israeli’-made weapons are also on their way.

On Sunday evening, the Netherlands announced that it would send 50 Panzerfaust 3 anti-tank weapon systems with 400 rockets and 200 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Amsterdam will also supply 100 sniper rifles and 3,000 additional munitions.

The Army Recognition website said that all the military equipment and weapons will be transported to an Eastern European country by American C-17 transport aircraft, which departed from Eindhoven airbase and once on the ground, will be transported by road to Ukraine.

The Panzerfaust 3 is a man-portable rocket-propelled grenade that can penetrate 900 mm of steel armor or 700 mm. of explosive reactive armor and destroy tanks such as the Soviet T-72 and T-80.

Manufactured by Germany’s ‘Dynamit Nobel Defense’, a subsidiary of the Zionist regime’s Rafael Advanced System, the Panzerfaust 3-IT anti-tank weapon is expected to arrive in Ukraine to replenish and boost the stockpiles of weapons able to destroy Russian armor.

A disposable anti-tank weapon, the Panzerfaust has an effective combat range of 300 meters against moving targets and up to 600 meters against static targets.

Operated by a single soldier, it can be used against tanks, armored vehicles, reinforced emplacements and light bunkers. Stationary aircraft can also be struck with it.

The company and the Zionist regime’s war minister did not comment on the matter. However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Saturday that he had authorized the Netherlands to send Ukraine the military equipment.

Germany did not need to ask for the Tel Aviv regime’s approval to transfer the weapons because the plant in Burbach was only acquired by Rafael in 2004, and Berlin had been financing the development of the weapon since it was first introduced in 1973.

‘Israel’ has sold billions of dollars’ worth of weapons systems to Eastern European countries since 2014. In 2021, the Zionist entity’s military exports reached $8.3 billion, with 30%t going to Europe.

The sales included missiles, rockets, air systems, communications, drones, intelligence systems, radar and early warning systems, ammunition and armament, manned aircraft, avionics, observation and electro-optics.

Rafael has also sold the SPIKE 5th generation, precise electro-optical missile to 18 European Union and NATO members, who can transfer the weapon to Ukraine if given the green light from Tel Aviv.

Video: NATO Too Weak to Face Russia? Scott Ritter on Russian Offensive

February 28, 2022

By Scott Ritter and Richard Medhurst

Global Research,

Richard Medhurst 25 February 2022

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

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Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, discusses the military invasion of Russia in Ukraine with Richard Medhurst.

According to Ritter, this is a massive Russian operation that aims to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine which means two things. One, Ukrainian military will cease to exist. And two, Ukrainian government will be gone because President Putin says it is a Nazi government.

Watch the interview below.

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Video: Freedom Convoy Solidarity in Alberta. Agreement with RCMP

The original source of this article is Richard Medhurst

Copyright © Scott Ritter and Richard Medhurst, Richard Medhurst, 2022

Chris Hedges: Russia, Ukraine and the Chronicle of a War Foretold

February 25th, 2022

By Chris Hedges

Source

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near-universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (Scheerpost) — I was in Eastern Europe in 1989, reporting on the revolutions that overthrew the ossified communist dictatorships that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany was unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.

There was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War.

How naive we were. The war industry did not intend to shrink its power or its profits. It set out almost immediately to recruit the former Communist Bloc countries into the European Union and NATO. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were forced to reconfigure their militaries, often through hefty loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware.

There would be no peace dividend. The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. (Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $ 6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks and other U.S. military equipment.) If Russia would not acquiesce to again being the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy. And here we are. On the brink of another Cold War, one from which only the war industry will profit while, as W. H. Auden wrote, the little children die in the streets.

The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win.

Firefighters hose down a burning building following a rocket attack on Kiev, Ukraine, Feb. 25, 2022. Photo | AP

In a classified diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks dated February 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked an eventual conflict with Russia, especially over Ukraine.

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests,” the cable reads.

Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. . . . Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership . . . Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.”

The Obama administration, not wanting to further inflame tensions with Russia, blocked arms sales to Kiev. But this act of prudence was abandoned by the Trump and Biden administrations. Weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain are pouring into Ukraine, part of the $1.5 billion in promised military aid. The equipment includes hundreds of sophisticated Javelins and NLAW anti-tank weapons despite repeated protests by Moscow.

The United States and its NATO allies have no intention of sending troops to Ukraine. Rather, they will flood the country with weapons, which is what it did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia.

The conflict in Ukraine echoes the novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  In the novel, it is acknowledged by the narrator that “there had never been a death more foretold” and yet no one was able or willing to stop it. All of us who reported from Eastern Europe in 1989 knew the consequences of provoking Russia, and yet few have raised their voices to halt the madness.  The methodical steps towards war took on a life of their own, moving us like sleepwalkers towards disaster.

Once NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, the Clinton administration promised Moscow that NATO combat troops would not be stationed in Eastern Europe, the defining issue of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations. This promise again turned out to be a lie. Then in 2014, the U.S. backed a coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who sought to build an economic alliance with Russia rather than the European Union. Of course, once integrated into the European Union, as seen in the rest of Eastern Europe, the next step is integration into NATO.  Russia, spooked by the coup, alarmed at the overtures by the EU and NATO, then annexed Crimea, largely populated by Russian speakers. And the death spiral that led us to the conflict currently underway in Ukraine became unstoppable.

The war state needs enemies to sustain itself. When an enemy can’t be found, an enemy is manufactured. Putin has become, in the words of Senator Angus King, the new Hitler, out to grab Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. The full-throated cries for war, echoed shamelessly by the press, are justified by draining the conflict of historical context, by elevating ourselves as the saviors and whoever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader.

I don’t know where this will end up. We must remember, as Putin reminded us, that Russia is a nuclear power. We must remember that once you open the Pandora’s box of war it unleashes dark and murderous forces no one can control. I know this from personal experience. The match has been lit. The tragedy is that there was never any dispute about how the conflagration would start.

Baiting the Bear Is Becoming a Dangerous Game

February 21, 2022

Global Research,

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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What the so-called Russian experts and politicians all forget is that the US does not have troops scattered about in Poland, Romania, the Baltic states and other Eastern European late comers to NATO because Washington cares about these countries and feels morally obliged to protect them from Russia, which does not want them. In truth, Washington doesn’t care a hoot about Ukraine, Poland, Romania and neither do Americans. 

The reasons for Washington’s presence in Eastern Europe are entirely different.  One reason is that Washington wants the countries as locations for missile bases such as Washington has placed in Poland and Romania.  These bases are on Russia’s borders leaving no response time to nuclear missiles launched from them.  The bases give Washington the advantage in a confrontation to back down Russia.

Another reason is that the NATO countries provide customers for the US armaments industry. Washington keeps pressure on NATO members to “do their part” and spend more on their own defense. So much of the analysis and commentary about the current situation in Ukraine presents Washington and NATO as rescuers on white horses riding to the defense of states threatened by Russia. If Russia really were a threat, Washington and NATO would not be so aggressive.

The Insanity of the West Accelerates

The Soviet Union had Eastern Europe as a buffer.  Most Russian experts at the time concluded that the Warsaw Pact was a net drain on Soviet resources.  Responsibility for these countries today is the last thing Russia wants.

All Russia wants is for the US to get military bases off her doorstep.  This is a reasonable demand, and compliance with it would relieve the tensions that otherwise could break out in war.  Washington’s aggressive policy seems designed for one reason only: to cause a war.

Few people understand that the US sanctions against Russia are based entirely on lies and are in effect acts of war.  That Russia has tolerated them is interpreted by Washington as Russian weakness.  The reason Russia gets so much abuse is that she doesn’t do anything about it.

The narrative is that Russia invaded Ukraine by accepting the vote in Crimea to be reunited with Russia. Until 1991, Crimea had been part of Russia since 1783.  The vast majority of the people who live there are Russian.  Between 1991 and 2014 when the US overthrew the Ukrainian government in a coup, Crimea was occupied by Russia as Russia’s Black Sea naval base is there.  The Russian forces were already there, because Russia had a long term lease on the area.

It was the US that invaded Ukraine while the Kremlin was preoccupied with the Sochi Olympics.  The US plan was for the puppet government it installed to revoke the lease and kick the Russians out of their naval base.  It was an audacious plan that had no chance of success.  To prevent Americans from understanding the situation, the narrative was started that Russia invaded Crimea.

There are Americans who pose as Russian experts who maintain that Putin has territorial ambitions to restore the Soviet empire.  These people are not experts. They are liars.  If Putin has territorial ambitions, why did he not reincorporate Georgia into Russia?  Why has he refused for 8 years to honor the vote of the Donbass Russians to be returned to Russia?  The Donbass area, like Crimea, is historically part of Russia. Both were transferred to the Ukrainian province of the Soviet Union by the Soviet government, but Russians, not Ukrainians live there.

In US universities and think tanks, researchers’ analyses come to conclusions consistent with the views of those who fund their research. This is why there are no more Stephen Cohens who give an independent objective analysis of the real situation.  Indeed, in the US today an objective analysis is considered to be pro-Russian and the author is said to be a Russian agent.

As a result, we get a one-sided story.  The problem with one-sided stories is that the implication is the other side is entirely to blame and hasn’t a leg to stand on.  This is the position that Russia finds herself in, and it is the reason that the West doesn’t listen to a word she says.  It is very dangerous to ignore Russia when she says she finds the situation intolerable.  Russia seems at times to be masochistic, but sooner or later she will bite back.

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Ukraine Crisis Will Spurn Wave of Authoritarianism Around the World

February 21, 2022

A convoy of truckers and supporters block an intersection near the border as they continue to protest coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandates, in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, February 19, 2022. REUTERS/Jennifer Gauthier – RC29NS9TJIMK

Martin Jay

Middle East countries, certainly in the GCC region, are benefitting from the Ukraine standoff as the heat is taken off them, Martin Jay writes.

Boris Johnson’s words themselves may be prolific. He said at a conference on 19^th of February in Munich that a Ukraine invasion would “echo” around the world while asking for Europe to take a united stand against Russia. In fact, the Ukraine crisis, without even one Russian soldier entering Eastern Ukraine, is having quite an impact already simply due to the media bandwidth it has taken, depriving other big stories the oxygen they deserve – particularly affecting the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA).

These countries, certainly in the GCC region, are benefitting from the Ukraine standoff as the heat is taken off them. In particular the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been given a get-out-of-jail-free card by western media in the latter’s abandonment of Yemen, a bloody senseless war there which has wiped out generations and left the rest with starvation and whose gruesome images used to fill TV screens and mainstream media’s print and online portals. But no more.

In fact, sceptics might even go further and argue that in the case of Saudi Arabia, it would appear that its mercurial young crown prince has actually taken full advantage of the media blackout on Yemen by ploughing ahead with his reforms which include the banning of Mosque loudspeakers, significantly reducing hours spent on Islamic education and Arabic language in the national curriculum and even allowing bikini beaches in Jeddah. The hope presumably is that at some point western media will return to the region and notice such changes and start to feature them in their reporting.

But there might be a long wait.

Remarkably, Putin’s standoff with the West might go on for some time, even if there is no invasion as such. In the meantime, for many of the elite which make up countries in the region who are fearing another Arab Spring, the limited media attention given to Yemen is interesting. But it is Justin Trudeau’s extraordinary authoritarian behaviour in Canada against peaceful truckers who wish to protest which will have ramifications in the Arab world. Not only will Arab leaders note that also the press coverage is limited as is the opprobrium from the normal so-called experts in Washington and London, but that they now have the green light from the West to replicate anti-democratic measures all in the name of the sanctity of the state and woe betide Canada for criticising KSA’s human rights record as it did previously when it demanded the release of Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi in 2018.

Trudeau has truly shocked the world with his arbitrary move to criminalise the protests and has set a template for the Middle East and Africa to follow suit.

Indeed in Africa, tyrannical, brutal regimes will not doubt note how the Ukraine crisis and the media attention it has attracted has caused almost a media blackout on authoritarian power grabs in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, western satellites which, in the case of Mali at least, have fallen into the hands of Moscow simply by its association with Wagner mercenaries. The very real fear that African dictators have which impacts their ability to scrounge aid from the World Bank and the IMF is press coverage itself from the media giants. When that line of communication is closed down, there’s no telling how African countries’ elites will react. There may well be a domino effect which will take many with it as it sweeps across the region, while the EU remains a impotent spectator to the winds of change.

And in the EU itself, Poland is no longer alone in being seen as the rude boy in the class who might be expelled from the club, or rather leaves unceremoniously. Others, like Hungary, are now falling victim to EU laws which challenge their constitutions and place them on a collision course with the maniacs in Brussels who cannot see how they are digging their own graves with their bellicose language and ultimatums. A recent study by the EU revealed that MEPs themselves are asking for a special slush fund of billions of euros to head off the next anti-EU referendum which is sending some EU leaders into a panic as many believe that one more EU member to follow Britain might be the end of the project as we know it.

None of these stories are getting any real traction or attention by journalists who are either heading to Ukraine or have turned all their attention to the tensions in their copy and left these subjects aside. Is this what Boris Johnson meant when he warned leaders in Munich about the consequences echoing around the world?

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s answers to questions from RT television channel Moscow, February 18, 2022

February 19, 2022

https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1799343/

Question: Western media and politicians continue to whip up tensions over the alleged Russian “invasion” of Ukraine, although it seems fewer and fewer people trust their statements as time goes by. This has become a bad joke even in the UK and the United States. Why do they go on with this? What do they want to achieve?

Sergey Lavrov: I am sure that even people who are halfway interested in international politics have become convinced that this is only propaganda, fake news and lies. The main thing is for those who invent these fakes to believe in them. They like it. If they do, they can continue. Why not, indeed?

This is ridiculous. Grown-up people make “forecasts” and repeat their incantations every day. The Politico magazine has postponed the “invasion” date several times. Their latest forecast is February 20. At the same time, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has been saying that the invasion may begin at any moment over the course of many months. They are trying to set the scene for the future. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Russia will “invade” Ukraine in a matter of weeks, if not days. We know that the State Department has warned its NATO allies confidentially that the “invasion” can be expected to begin before the end of February. However, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (no matter what you may think of his activities) has said they have no information indicating that an invasion is imminent. According to the Foreign Office, “it’s important that [they] prepare for any eventuality,” and “even if Russia pulls back from the Ukrainian border, the problem will not have gone away.” They are creating pretexts for the future. When the drills end, the troops will return to their barracks. It is already taking place, as they can see. But they are setting the tune for the future: even if Russia moves its troops back to their permanent bases, the threat will remain. … there is a saying that real men do what they say, at the very least, at the international level.

In the meantime, they are increasing their military and military-technical presence and building up their military infrastructure. The UK has said that it will double the number of troops in Estonia and will send equipment, including tanks and armoured fighting vehicles there. US Permanent Representative to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield has provided an example of “refined diplomacy” when she told the media that Russia is “prepared for an attack any day.” “We’ve seen them do it when they invaded other parts of Eastern Europe,” she said. Well, they are giving us no slack.

Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of other NATO countries say that NATO is a defensive alliance. President Vladimir Putin reminded Mr Scholz during a news conference following the talks that NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999. The Chancellor replied that this was done to prevent a genocide of Kosovo Albanians, and that everything went well, and the region is prospering now. But it is not prospering at all. Kosovo and several other parts of the Western Balkans have become a breeding ground for crime, with terrorists and drug traffickers. Mercenaries are recruited there to fight in the conflicts that are being covertly fomented, including by the United States. According to available information, mercenaries are being recruited in Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, including for deployment to Donbass in an attempt to knock Russia off balance. We are currently checking this information.

The situation Olaf Scholz described with regard to Yugoslavia had nothing to do with genocide. International courts have not passed this verdict. We know who created a pretext for the bombing of Yugoslavia: US national William Walker, who headed the OSCE’s Kosovo Verification Mission. There were armed clashes, and he convened journalists to tell them in a televised statement that they had discovered the bodies of 30 civilians in Racak who had been massacred by the Serbs. He described it as genocide and took a unilateral decision, which he had no right to do, to withdraw the mission from Kosovo. This is what triggered the bombing. They said that the atrocity in Racak was the last straw and that they would cut short the activities of the criminal regime.

Later a special group was assigned to investigate the incident. It established that the dead were not civilians but militants who were dressed in civilian clothes after they had been killed in battle. The holes in their clothes did not align with the wounds. Yes, the case was investigated very thoroughly. So, saying that NATO’s invasion of Yugoslavia had a noble purpose is wrong and unethical.

The statement made by William Walker played the same role as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s vial with tooth powder, which provided an excuse to invade Iraq and destroy it. So far, neither democracy nor economy is flourishing there. Everyone knows this.Our NATO colleagues will not be able to avoid a discussion about how we are going to implement the obligations we have signed up for. They cannot have a selective interpretation of the concept that has been approved at the top level and stipulates that all the components of indivisible security are interconnected.

We are in correspondence with our American colleagues. We have responded to their reply to our December initiatives. We have not made much progress on the issues of principle. We will continue to uphold a comprehensive approach. It is impossible to make lasting agreements on matters of secondary importance without coordinating the political concept of our interaction.

Question: It has been reported that you plan to meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Is this so? Do you expect to make progress?

Sergey Lavrov: Secretary Blinken and I have agreed that he would be ready to meet with me after Russia sent its document and they analysed our vision of the situation. Both of us are interested in this. It meets our interests and plans.

As I have said, we want to explain to our American colleagues and their NATO allies that we will not be satisfied with verbal promises, especially since the written obligations by the heads of state and government regarding NATO’s full respect for Russia’s interests (let alone the oral guarantees which President Vladimir Putin has mentioned on numerous occasions) turned out to be worthless. This won’t do.

We will press on for a fair solution. I don’t want to use slang, but there is a saying that real men do what they say, at the very least, at the international level.

الأمن القوميّ الروسيّ والامتحان الأوكرانيّ

 الأربعاء 16 شباط 2022

 سعاده مصطفى أرشيد

أخذت الدولة الروسية تأخذ الاسم والشكل انطلاقاً من إمارة (دوقية) موسكو إثر تحرّرها من احتلال وسيطرة القبيلة الذهبية المغولية، وأخذت شكل الدولة الحديثة في عهد إيفان الرابع الرهيب أواخر القرن الرابع عشر، ثم شكل الدولة العصرية ـ الحديثة على يد قيصرها بطرس الأكبر المستنير والمنفتح على قيم التطوّر والحداثة.

هذه الدولة الأوراسية هي الأكبر مساحة في العالم مع ما خسرته إثر تفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي، لا بل هي الدولة الأكبر عبر التاريخ الواضح للإنسان عبر الستة آلاف سنة من التاريخ الواضح والجلي، وتملك أكبر مخزون من الموارد الطبيعية والخامات كمّاً ونوعاً، وهي الاقتصاد السابع عالمياً والسادس في القدرة الشرائية والثالث في الإنفاق الحربيّ وتملك ربع المياه العذبة في العالم.

إنها القوة البرية الأكبر في العالم إلا أنّ نقاط ضعفها تكمن في مسألتين هامتين، المسالة الأولى هي أطرافها المترامية من أقصى الشرق المطلّ على بحر اليابان والمحيط الهادي، إلى المحيط المتجمّد الشمالي وبحر البلطيق، إلى امتلاكها 40% من قارة أوروبا، الأمر الذي يوزع قواها على كلّ تلك المساحة، والمسألة الثانية أنها غير مطلّة بحرياً على المياه الدافئة، لذلك تبقى محصورة، الأمر الذي حرمها حتى من الاكتشافات الجغرافيّة في عصر تلك الاكتشافات التي أبحرت بها الدول الأوروبية غرباً عبر الأطلسي، لم تملك روسيا إلا البحار شرقاً عبر المحيط الهادي لتكتشف ألاسكا وبلاد الأسكيمو.

بذلت روسيا محاولات مضنية استمرّت قروناً للوصول للمياه الدافئة، وإيجاد مواطئ قدم لها على سواحل المتوسط، ومن تلك المحاولات الدعم الذي بذلته في دعم تمرد حاكم الجليل ظاهر العمر على الدولة العثمانيّة، واشتباكها مع الأساطيل العثمانية والأوروبية لفكّ الحصار عن عكا، ومنها حروبها مع الدولة العثمانية للوصول إلى البحر الأسود وبحر أزوف، وهو ما نجحت فيه بعد قرون من القتال، وكان ذلك حلاً جزئياً فالبحر الأسود بحر شبه مغلق وطريقه للفضاء البحريّ لا بدّ له من المرور عبر المضائق التركية وبحر مرمرة.

هذه الحروب على طول زمنها كانت بالغة الكلفة المادية والبشرية، لدرجة أنها اضطرت الدولة الروسية لبيع ألاسكا للولايات المتحدة في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر لتمويل حروبها للوصول للمياه الدافئة والتي لم تتوقف في زمن الاتحاد السوفياتي والحرب الباردة، فكان دخولها لمصر عبد الناصر والعالم العربي والثالث، وكان ما عاصرناه من اجتياحها المرهق لأفغانستان، ومشاركتها الأخيرة في وعلى الحرب السورية التي كانت قد منحتها سابقاً إطلالتها الوحيدة على الفضاء البحريّ في ميناء طرطوس.

لعبت أيدي الزمن والفساد والجمود لعبتها التي ترافقت مع نظريات الاحتواء المزدوج وسياسات سباق حرب النجوم على إنهاء الاتحاد السوفياتي المرهق والذي أعلن عنه انهيار جدار برلين، فانفلتت دول الكتلة الشرقية الأعضاء في حلف وارسو من قبضة موسكو ونقلت سلاحها لكتف آخر لتصبح في حلف شمال الأطلسي وتدخل نظام السوق الاقتصادي، فيما استقلت دول عديدة كانت جزءاً من الاتحاد السوفياتي لتصبح دولاً مستقلة.

كما لعب الغرب ممثلاً بحلف شمال الأطلسي والاتحاد الأوروبي في ملعب موسكو، وأخرج دول أوروبا الشرقية من بيت الطاعة الروسي واستباح حتى روسيا نفسها في عهدي ميخائيل غورباتشوف وبوريس يلتسن، واستمر في محاولاته السياسية في الملعب الآسيوي للاتحاد السوفياتي السابق.

عودة الروح لروسيا كانت أمراً لا بدّ منه طال زمن الوهن أم قصر، وكان أن استردّت الروح وبالتالي استطاعت تدارك الخطر المحدق الذي تبدّى أولاً في جورجيا وتصدّت له موسكو بالحديد والنار، ثم في أوكرانيا عام 2014 حيث استردّت شبه جزيرة القرم ومقاطعتين من أوكرانيا، ومؤخراً في كازاخستان واليوم في أوكرانيا التي تحاول الانضمام لحلف الأطلسي ظناً منها أنّ هذا يحميها من جارها القويّ.

في الجانب الآخر من الصورة تريد الولايات المتحدة التفرّغ للصين وبحرها ونموّها الاقتصادي السريع وطريق حريرها، في حين تعرف الصين أنّ نقطة الاشتباك الأخطر في جزء منها مستقلّ ومعاد لها، انه تايوان أو الصين الوطنية سابقاً، وفي غمرة الاستعداد والتموضع الأميركي في جوار الصين، أجرت هذه مناورات واسعة مشتركة مع إيران وروسيا في بحر عُمان، ولعلّ الولايات المتحدة قد رأت في اشتباك استباقيّ مع روسيا حول أوكرانيا ما يمكن اعتباره تمريناً حياً لما يمكن أن يحدث مع تايوان، هذا إضافة إلى انزعاج واشنطن من حلفائها الأوروبيين في علاقاتهم سواء مع الصين أو روسيا، ألمانيا هي الشريك التجاري الثاني لروسيا سواء في شراء الغاز والاستثمار في خط غاز نورد 2 أو في التبادل التجاري بين البلدين والذي يستثني واشنطن في السياسة والاستراتيجية وحتى في التبادل بأوراق دولارها، ومنزعجة كذلك من فرنسا في حربها الباردة، حتى الآن مع الصين والذي تبدّى في إلغاء أستراليا صفقة شراء الغواصات الفرنسية واستبدالها بغواصات أميركية.

لن تقبل روسيا بوجود الناتو في أوكرانيا أو استعمال الأرض الأوكرانية لأغراض عسكرية ولا بأيّ شكل من الأشكال، فالمسألة لها علاقة بالمقدس الروسي، بالأمن القومي، وتراها مسألة حياة أو موت، فيما تراها واشنطن مسألة سياسيّة تحتمل فيها الربح والخسارة وهي لا تمسّ جوهر الأمن القومي الأميركي، من هذه المعادلة يمكن القول بأن روسيا لن تتراجع عن محاولة فرض ما تريد.

حدّد الرئيس الأميركي بايدن يوم أمس الأربعاء موعداً لبدء الحرب، وهو موعد انتهاء دورة ألعاب رياضيّة في الصين ولكن حتى موعد دفع هذا المقال للنشر لم يظهر أن الموعد الذي ضربه الرئيس الأميركي دقيقاً، وقد ردّ عليه مصدر دبلوماسي روسي مؤكداً ومتهكماً: أن لا نية لبدء الحرب الأربعاء وأن ليس من عادة الدول أن تبدأ حروبها في يوم أربعاء.

هناك احتمالات ثلاثة…

الاحتمال الأول: أن تجتاح القوات الروسية أوكرانيا غير آبهة بالعالم وعقوباته وأية نتائج لهذا الاجتياح، وواضعة نهاية للدولة الأوكرانية، ولكن مخاطرة بحرب استنزاف طويلة والتمرّغ بمستنقع شبيه بما حصل معها ومع غيرها في أفغانستان واليمن.

الاحتمال الثاني: أن تكتفي روسيا باحتلال أجزاء من أوكرانيا مجاورة لها، وتملأها بالقواعد العسكرية القادرة على السيطرة على أيّ تحرك معادٍ لها في الأراضي الأوكرانية.

الاحتمال الثالث: هو في الوصول إلى تسوية تكون فيها أيه حكومة أوكرانية موافق عليها من قبل موسكو، وتكون غير راغبة لا في دخول حلف شمال الأطلسي وراغبة عن ممارسة أي عمل معادٍ لموسكو.

ليس من السهل التنبّؤ بمجريات الأمور ومآلات هذا التصعيد الذي قد يهدّد السلم العالمي، ولكن قد يكون من المباح التوقع بأنّ موسكو جادّة ومستعدة للسير إلى أبعد مدى للحفاظ على أمنها القومي.

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*سياسي فلسطيني مقيم في الكفير ـ جنين ـ فلسطين المحتلة.

• مراسل الميادين: توتر حاد على خط التماس مع القوات الأوكرانية في دونباس
• لماذا يسعى بايدن إلى “حرب أوكرانيا”؟
• 3 صواريخ ستغير معادلات المنطقة إيراني سوري لبنان،تركيا وإسرائيل بخندق أوكرانيا، وروسيا ترد باللاذقية

التحالف الصيني الروسي.. أين سوريا منه؟

السبت 12 فبراير 2022

المصدر: الميادين نت

أحمد الدرزي 

يرتبط مستقبل سوريا بنتيجة الصراع في أوكرانيا، فقد تتحول الضغوط المتبادَلة بين الأميركيين والروس، الذين يؤازرهم الصينيون، إلى الساحة السورية.

شكّلت الحرب على سوريا هاجساً للأمن القومي الروسي والصيني والإيراني، الأمر الذي دفع الدول الثلاث بعيداً في مواجهة مشروع الولايات المتحدة فيها.

روسيا: “نُعَوِّل على الصين من أجل فرض توازن القوى العالمي مع واشنطن وأوروبا”.

لم يكن الرابع من شباط/فبراير لهذا العام يوماً عادياً، ففيه وقّع الرئيسان شي جين بينغ وفلاديمير بوتين على اتفاق التحدّي، وأظهرا للعالم أجمع أن شراكتهما أبعد كثيراً من مصطلح الحلف، وأقل من الاندماج، فتردّد صداه في كل العواصم، بما في ذلك دمشق، التي أُصيبت بالإرهاق، وهي تصارع ذاتها والعالم، من أجل الخروج من مأزقها الداخلي، الذي لا ينفصل عن الخارج، وتنتظر انعكاس هذا الصدى عليها.

تخوض الصين وروسيا، مشتركتَين، صراعاً متدرجاً مع النظام العالمي القطبي الوحيد، والذي تَشكَّلَ بعد انهيار الاتحاد السوڤياتي، فكانت الشراكة الاستراتيجية الجديدة عام 1996، والتي لم تعطِ تصوراً حقيقياً عن مدى التهديدات، التي يمكن لهذه الشراكة أن تسببها لواشنطن.

كان للحرب على سوريا، موقعاً وتاريخاً، دورٌ أساسيٌّ في إظهار حجم العلاقة بين الطرفين، بعد يقين الدولتين بأنهما المُستهدفَتان الأساسيتان لـ”ثورات الربيع العربي”، بالإضافة إلى إيران التي تشكل القوة العسكرية الصادمة في غربي آسيا، والتي عملت عليها الإدارات الأميركية المتلاحقة، الأمر الذي دفعهما إلى التصدي السياسي للحرب، عبر منع إعطاء مظلة شرعية دولية في مجلس الأمن، للتدخل العسكري المباشر في سوريا، كما حدث في ليبيا.

وفَّر التآزر السياسي الروسي الصيني، في الحرب السورية، فرصة كبيرة لروسيا والصين من أجل إخراج البعد الحقيقي لطبيعة الشراكة بينهما إلى العلن، لكن البُعد العسكري كان منوطاً بإيران وروسيا بصورة متتالية، فدخلت إيران وحزب الله وقوى عراقية أولاً، ثم شاركت روسيا في نهاية أيلول/سبتمبر 2015.

شكّلت الحرب في سوريا هاجساً للأمن القومي الروسي الصيني الإيراني، الأمر الذي دفع الدول الثلاث بعيداً في مواجهة مشروع الولايات المتحدة فيها، كما أنها شكلت فرصة للأطراف الثلاثة، وخصوصاً بالنسبة إلى موسكو، التي عملت على مدى أكثر من قرنين من أجل الوصول إلى المياه الدافئة، وهذا ما حققته بعد توسيع مطار حميميم، وتحويل أغلبيته إلى قاعدة عسكرية جوية، في مواجهة قاعدة أنجرليك للناتو في تركيا، بالإضافة إلى القاعدة العسكرية البحرية في طرطوس.

فرض الدور العسكري الروسي المباشِر نفسه على طبيعة الاتفاق مع الصين، التي أحجمت عن التدخل العسكري، نتيجةً لاستراتيجيتها المبنية على استراتيجية دفاعية فقط، الأمر الذي فرض معادلة بين الطرفين، تكون فيها موسكو صاحبة الدور الأساس، وتحتاج بكين إلى التوافق مع موسكو في تحقيق مشروعها “مبادرة الحزام والطريق”.

تغيّرت أحوال الدولتين مع عودة الديمقراطيين إلى البيت الأبيض، وظهرت عدوانية أميركا الكبيرة في طريقة التعاطي العدواني مع روسيا، في الدرجة الأولى، ومع الصين المؤجَّلة إلى المرحلة التالية، في الدرجة الثانية. ولمس الطرفان هذا التحول من خلال محاولات واشنطن تحريك الثورات الملوَّنة في هونغ كونغ وفي موسكو. وبعد الفشل، تحوّلت إلى سياسات عدوانية جديدة، عبر إنشاء تحالف عسكري جديد، “أوكوس”، ضد الصين، ومحاولة ضم أوكرانيا إلى حلف الناتو.

تشكّل كل من تايوان وأوكرانيا أولوية قصوى لكل دولة، فتايوان لا تزال تشكل تهديداً مستمراً للصين، بحكم الوجود الأميركي الذرائعي فيها، من أجل منع عودتها إلى الوطن الأم من جهة، وتهديد الممر البحري الفاصل بينهما، والذي يشكّل عصباً للتجارة البحرية. كما أن بكين لا يمكنها التنازل عن تايوان، لأن هذا أمر يمس سيادتها وعنوان وحدتها الكاملة، بالإضافة إلى ما تشكله تايوان من إضافة مهمة جداً إلى التكنولوجيا الصينية، باستحواذها على أهم المعامل المنتجة للمعالِجات، وخصوصاً بعد العقوبات الأميركية على الصين.

وتشكل أوكرانيا الملف الأهم في الاستراتيجية الروسية، وهي أولوية قصوى لها، وخصوصاً إذا استطاعت واشنطن ضمّها إلى حلف الناتو، بالإضافة إلى أهميتها التاريخية، والتي لا تنفصل عن التاريخ الروسي الإمبراطوري. وهي واقعاً أساس روسيا التاريخية، ولا تزال في الوجدان الروسي جزءاً من روسيا.

أولوية الملفين لكِلا البلدين تدفعهما إلى التعاطي مع سائر الملفات من موقع ساحات الصراع المتعددة. فالنظام الدولي الجديد، والذي تم إعلانه من بكين، لا يمكن له أن يثبّت قدميه واقعاً إلاّ بعودة تايوان إلى الصين، وخروج الولايات المتحدة من بحر الصين والمحيط الهادي، وبالتوازي بعودة أوكرانيا إلى روسيا، أو عزلها عن البحر الأسود، وإفقادها دور الخاصرة الرخوة، وإقرار الولايات المتحدة وأوروبا بهواجس الأمن القومي الروسي، ليس في أوكرانيا فقط، بل في كل أوروبا الشرقية.

يرتبط مستقبل سوريا، في الدرجة الأولى، بنتيجة الصراع في أوكرانيا، فقد تتحول الضغوط المتبادَلة بين الأميركيين والروس، الذين يؤازرهم الصينيون، إلى الساحة السورية. ومن الصعب على واشنطن أن تخسر معركة أوكرانيا، ففي ذلك فقدانها استمرارها قطباً وحيداً، بالإضافة إلى تراجع موثوقيتها لدى من يدور في فلكها، وخصوصاً بعد خروجها المُذِلّ من أفغانستان، وما قد يترك من آثار في النظام المالي العالمي المرتبط بالدولار. 

كما أن موسكو لا يمكن أن تتراجع عن مطالباتها، ففي ذلك هزيمة قد تنعكس على مجمل إنجازاتها، بعد عودتها إلى المسرح الدولي، ولها مصلحة الآن مع الصين في إخراج الأميركيين من سوريا، الأمر الذي يتيح التواصل البري من شانغهاي إلى شرقي المتوسط.

يبقى الوضع السوري هو الأصعب في منطقة غربي آسيا، وربما في العالم أجمع، وهو غير قابل للحل في المدى القريب، إلاّ إذا تغيَّرت معطيات الصراع، دولياً وإقليمياً، خلال الأشهر والسنوات المقبلة، وخصوصاً إذا تمت العودة إلى الاتفاق النووي، الذي سيترك آثاره الإيجابية في كل المنطقة، لكن من دون الوصول إلى مرحلة الاستقرار والنهوض. والأمر يتطلب التعاطي مع المبادرة الصينية تجاه سوريا بجدية أكبر وبرؤية مغايرة، وخصوصاً أن التفاهم الروسي الصيني بشأن طريقة التعاطي مع سوريا سقط، مع توقيع اتفاق شراكة المواجهة مع الولايات المتحدة وأوروبا، والاندفاعة الصينية المباشِرة نحو دمشق، والعمل على تنفيذ مذكِّرات التفاهم بين البلدين. فالصين هي الوحيدة التي تمتلك الهامشين الاقتصادي والتكنولوجي، القادرين على إنقاذ سوريا من تداعيات تدهور الوضع الاقتصادي غير المُحتمَل للسوريين، بمساعدة إيرانية، وقبول روسي. فهل تندفع دمشق نحو تسهيل الحضور الصيني، من خلال إجراءات تشريعية واقتصادية مغايرة لكل المرحلة السابقة؟    

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“Do You Want a War Between Russia and NATO?”

February 09, 2022

Source

By Pepe Escobar,

ISTANBUL – Emmanuel Macron is no Talleyrand. Self-promoted as “Jupiterian”, he may have finally got down to earth for a proper realpolitik insight while ruminating one of the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs key bon mots: “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’, a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no’, and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.”

Mr. Macron went to Moscow to see Mr. Putin with a simple 4-stage plan in mind. 1. Clinch a wide-ranging deal with Putin on Ukraine, thus stopping  “Russian aggression”. 2. Bask in the glow as the West’s Peacemaker. 3. Raise the EU’s tawdry profile, as he’s the current president of the EU Council. 4. Collect all the spoils then bag the April presidential election in France.

Considering he all but begged for an audience in a flurry of phone calls, Macron was received by Putin with no special honors. Comic relief was provided by French mainstream media hysterics, “military strategists” included, evoking the “French castle” sketch in Monty Python’s Holy Grail while reaffirming every stereotype available about  “cowardly frogs”. Their “analysis”: Putin is “isolated” and wants “the military option”. Their top intel source: Bezos-owned CIA rag The Washington Post.

Still, it was fascinating to watch – oh, that loooooong table in the Kremlin: the only EU leader who took the trouble to actually listen to Putin was the one who, months ago, pronounced NATO as “brain-dead”. So the ghosts of Charles de Gaulle and Talleyrand did seem to have engaged in a lively chat, framed by raw economics, finally imprinting on the “Jupiterian” that the imperial obsession on preventing Europe by all means from profiting from wider trade with Eurasia is a losing game.

After a strenuous six hours of discussions Putin, predictably, monopolized the eminently quotable department, starting with one that will be reverberating all across the Global South for a long time: “Citizens of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia have seen how peaceful is NATO.”

There’s more. The already iconic  Do you want a war between Russia and NATO? – followed by the ominous  “there will be no winners”. Or take this one, on Maidan: “Since February 2014, Russia has considered a coup d’état to be the source of power in Ukraine. This is a bad sandbox, we don’t like this kind of game.”

On the Minsk agreements, the message was blunt: “The President of Ukraine has said that he does not like any of the clauses of the Minsk agreements. Like it, or not – be patient, my beauty. They must be fulfilled.”

The “real issue behind the present crisis”

Macron for his part stressed, “new mechanisms are needed to ensure stability in Europe, but not by revising existing agreements, perhaps new security solutions would be innovative.” So nothing that Moscow had not stressed before. He added, “France and Russia have agreed to work together on security guarantees.” The operative term is “France”. Not the non-agreement capable United States government.

Anglo-American spin insisted that Putin had agreed not to launch new “military initiatives” – while keeping mum on what Macron promised in return. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm any agreement. He only said that the Kremlin will engage with Macron’s dialogue proposals, “provided that the United States also agrees with them.” And for that, as everyone knows, there’s no guarantee.

The Kremlin has been stressing for months that Russia has no interest whatsoever in invading de facto black hole Ukraine. And Russian troops will return to their bases after exercises are over. None of this has anything to do with “concessions” by Putin.

And then came the bombshell: French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire – the inspiration for one of the main characters in Michel Houellebecq’s cracking new book, Anéantir – said that the launch of Nord Stream 2 “is one of the main components of de-escalating tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian border.” Gallic flair formulated out loud what no German had the balls to say.

In Kiev, after his stint in Moscow, it looks like Macron properly told Zelensky which way the wind blows now. Zelensky hastily confirmed Ukraine is ready to implement the Minsk agreements; it never was, for seven long years. He also said he expects to hold a summit in the Normandy format – Kiev, the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Germany and France – “in the near future”. A meeting of Normandy format political advisers will happen in Berlin on Thursday.

Way back in August 2020, I was already pointing to which way we were heading in the master chessboard. A few sharp minds in the Beltway, emailing their networks, did notice in my column how “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history, switching world power in favor of these three great powers against Anglo-Saxon sea power.”

Now, a very high-level Deep State intel source, retired, comes down to the nitty gritty, pointing out how “the secret negotiations between Russia and the US center around missiles going into Eastern Europe, as the US frantically drives for completing its development of hypersonic missiles.”

The main point is that if the US places such hypersonic missiles in Romania and Poland, as planned, the time for them to reach Moscow would be 1/10 the time of a Tomahawk. It’s even worse for Russia if they are placed in the Baltics. The source notes, “the US plan is to neutralize the more advanced defensive missile systems that seal Russia’s airspace. This is why the US has offered to allow Russia to inspect these missile sites in the future, to prove that there are no hypersonic nuclear missiles. Yet that’s not a solution, as the Raytheon missile launchers can handle both offensive and defensive missiles, so it’s possible to sneak in the offensive missiles at night. Thus everything requires continuous observation.”

The bottom line is stark: “This is the real issue behind the present crisis. The only solution is no missile sites allowed in Eastern Europe.” That happens to be an essential part of Russia’s demands for security guarantees.

Sailing to Byzantium

Alastair Crooke has demonstrated how “the West slowly is discovering that that it has no pressure point versus Russia (its economy being relatively sanctions-proof), and its military is no match for that of Russia’s.”

In parallel, Michael Hudson has conclusively shown how “the threat to US dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.”

Quite a few of us, independent analysts from both the Global North and South, have been stressing non-stop for years that the pop Gotterdammerung in progress hinges on the end of American geopolitical control over Eurasia. Occupied Germany and Japan enforcing the strategic submission of Eurasia from the west down to the east; the ever-expanding NATO; the ever de-multiplied Empire of Bases, all the lineaments of the 75-year-plus free lunch are collapsing.

The new groove is set to the tune of the New Silk Roads, or BRI; Russia’s unmatched hypersonic power – and now the non-negotiable demands for security guarantees; the advent of RCEP – the largest free trade deal on the planet uniting East Asia; the Empire all but expelled from Central Asia after the Afghan humiliation; and sooner rather than later its expulsion from the first island chain in the Western Pacific, complete with a starring role for the Chinese DF-21D “carrier killer” missiles.

The Ray McGovern-coined MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) was not capable to muster the collective IQ to even begin to understand the terms of the Russia-China joint statement issued on an already historic February 4, 2022. Some in Europe actually did – arguably located in the Elysée Palace.

This enlightened unpacking focuses on the interconnection of some key formulations, such as “relations between Russia and China superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era” and “friendship which shows no limits”: the strategic partnership, for all its challenges ahead, is way more complex than a mere “treaty” or “agreement”. Without deeper understanding of Chinese and Russian civilizations, and their way of thinking, Westerners simply are not equipped to get it.

In the end, if we manage to escape so much Western doom and gloom, we might end up navigating a warped remix of Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium. We may always dream of the best and the brightest in Europe finally sailing away from the iron grip of tawdry imperial Exceptionalistan:

“Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enameling / To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; / Or set upon a golden bough to sing /To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua: The US-Russia Conflict Enters a New Phase

February 7, 2022

http://Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (L) with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Kremlin, via Wikimedia Commons)

By Ramzy Baroud

As soon as Moscow received an American response to its security demands in Ukraine, it answered indirectly by announcing greater military integration between it and three South American countries, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.

Washington’s response, on January 26, to Russia’s demands of withdrawing NATO forces from Eastern Europe and ending talks about a possible Kyiv membership in the US-led alliance, was noncommittal.

For its part, the US spoke of ‘a diplomatic path’, which will address Russian demands through ‘confidence-building measures’. For Russia, such elusive language is clearly a non-starter.

On that same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced, in front of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, that his country “has agreed with the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to develop partnerships in a range of areas, including stepping up military collaboration,” Russia Today reported.

The timing of this agreement was hardly coincidental, of course. The country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov did not hesitate to link the move to the brewing Russia- NATO conflict. Russia’s strategy in South America could potentially be “involving the Russian Navy,” if the US continues to ‘provoke’ Russia. According to Ryabkov, this is Russia’s version of the “American style (of having) several options for its foreign and military policy”.

Now that the Russians are not hiding the motives behind their military engagement in South America, going as far as considering the option of sending troops to the region, Washington is being forced to seriously consider the new variable.

Though US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan denied that Russian military presence in South America was considered in recent security talks between both countries, he described the agreement between Russia and the three South American countries as unacceptable, vowing that the US would react “decisively” to such a scenario.

The truth is, that scenario has already played out in the past. When, in January 2019, the US increased its pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to concede power to the US-backed Juan Guaido, a coup seemed imminent. Chaos in the streets of Caracas, and other Venezuelan cities, mass electric outages, lack of basic food and supplies, all seemed part of an orchestrated attempt at subduing Venezuela, which has for years championed a political discourse that is based on independent and well-integrated South American countries.

For weeks, Washington continued to tighten the pressure valves imposing hundreds of sanction orders against Venezuelan entities, state-run companies and individuals. This led to Caracas’ decision to sever diplomatic ties with Washington. Ultimately, Moscow stepped in, sending in March 2019 two military planes full of troops and equipment to prevent any possible attempt at overthrowing Maduro. In the following months, Russian companies poured in to help Venezuela out of its devastating crisis, instigating another US-Russia conflict, where Washington resorted to its favorite weapon, sanctions, this time against Russian oil companies.

The reason that Russia is keen on maintaining a geostrategic presence in South America is due to the fact that a stronger Russian role in that region is coveted by several countries who are desperate to loosen Washington’s grip on their economies and political institutions.

Countries like Cuba, for example, have very little trust in the US. After having some of the decades-long sanctions lifted on Havana during the Obama administration in 2016, new sanctions were imposed during the Trump administration in 2021. That lack of trust in Washington’s political mood swings makes Cuba the perfect ally for Russia. The same logic applies to other South American countries.

It is still too early to speak with certainty about the future of Russia’s military presence in South America. What is clear, though, is the fact that Russia will continue to build on its geostrategic presence in South America, which is also strengthened by the greater economic integration between China and most South American countries. Thanks to the dual US political and economic war on Moscow and Beijing, both countries have fortified their alliance like never before.

What options does this new reality leave Washington with? Not many, especially as Washington has, for years, failed to defeat Maduro in Venezuela or to sway Cuba and others to join the pro-American camp.

Much of the outcome, however, is also dependent on whether Moscow sees itself as part of a protracted geostrategic game in South America. So far, there is little evidence to suggest that Moscow is using South America as a temporary card to be exchanged, when the time comes, for US and NATO concessions in Eastern Europe. Russia is clearly digging its heels, readying itself for the long haul.

For now, Moscow’s message to Washington is that Russia has plenty of options and that it is capable of responding to US pressure with equal or greater pressure. Indeed, if Ukraine is Russia’s redline, then South America – which has fallen under US influence since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 – is the US’s own hemispheric redline.

As the plot thickens in Eastern Europe, Russia’s move in South America promises to add a new component that would make a win-lose scenario in favor of the US and NATO nearly impossible. An alternative outcome is for the US-led alliance to recognize the momentous changes on the world’s geopolitical map, and to simply learn to live with it.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

The Year of the Tiger Starts with a Sino-Russian Bang

February 3, 2022

Pepe Escobar

Independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist

The Year of the Black Water Tiger will start, for all practical purposes, with a Beijing bang this Friday, as Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, after a live meeting before the initial ceremony of the Winter Olympics, will issue a joint statement on international relations.

That will represent a crucial move in the Eurasia vs. NATOstan chessboard, as the Anglo-American axis is increasingly bogged down in Desperation Row: after all, “Russian aggression” stubbornly refuses to materialize.

After an interminable wait arguably due to the lack of functionaries properly equipped to write an intelligible letter, the US/NATO combo finally concocted a predictable, jargon-drenched bureaucratese non-response “response” to the Russian demands of security guarantees.

The contents were leaked to a Spanish newspaper, a full member of NATOstan media. The leaker, according to Brussels sources, may be in Kiev by now. The Pentagon, in damage control mode, rushed to assert, “We didn’t do it”. The State Dept. said, “it’s authentic.”

Even before the leak of the non-response “response”, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was forced to send messages to all NATO foreign ministers, including US Secretary Blinken, asking how they understand the principle of indivisibility of security – if they actually do.

Lavrov was extremely specific: “I am referring to our demands that everyone faithfully implement the agreements on the indivisibility of security that were reached within the OSCE in 1999 in Istanbul and in 2010 in Astana. These agreements provide not only for the freedom to choose alliances, but also make this freedom conditional on the need to avoid any steps that will strengthen the security of any state at the expense of infringing on the security of others.”

Lavrov hit the heart of the matter when he stressed, “our Western colleagues are not simply trying to ignore this key principle of international law agreed in the Euro-Atlantic space, but to completely forget it.”

Lavrov also made it very clear “we will not allow this topic to be ‘wrapped up’. We will insist on a honest conversation and an explanation of why the West does not want to fulfill its obligations at all or exclusively, selectively, and in its favor.”

Crucially, China fully supports Russian demands for security guarantees in Europe, and fully agrees that the security of one state cannot be ensured by inflicting damage on another state.

This is as serious as it gets: the US/NATO combo are bent on smashing two crucial treaties that directly concern European security, and they think they can get away with it because there is less than zero discussion about the content and its implications across NATOstan media.

Western public opinion remains absolutely clueless. The only narrative, hammered 24/7, is “Russian aggression” – by the way duly emphasized in NATO’s non-response “response”.

Wanna check our military-technical gear?

For the umpteenth time Moscow made it very clear it’s not going to make any concessions on the security demands just because the Empire of Chaos keeps threatening – what else – extra harsh sanctions, the sole imperial “policy” short of outright bombing.

The new sanctions package, anyway, is ready to go for quite a while now, arguably capable of cutting Moscow off from the Western financial system and/or casino, and targeting, among others, Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank and Alfa-Bank.

And that brings us to what’s Moscow going to do next – considering the predictable “extremely negative attitude” (Lavrov) from NATOstan. Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko had already hinted NATO knows perfectly well what’s coming, even before the non-response “response”:

“NATO knows perfectly well what kind of military-technical measures may follow from Russia. We make no secret of our possibilities and are acting very transparently.”

Still the American “partners” are not listening. The Russians remain unfazed. Grushko framed it in realpolitik terms: concrete measures will depend on the “military potentials” that could be used against Russia. That’s code for what sort of nuclear weapons will be deployed in Eastern Europe, and what sort of lethal equipment will keep being unloaded in Ukraine.

In fact Ukraine – or country 404, per Andrei Martyanov’s indelible definition – is just a lowly pawn in their (imperial) game. Adding to Kiev’s misery on all fronts, the head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Alexei Danilov, all but gave away the (regional) game.

In an interview to AP, Danilov said that “the Minsk Agreements can create chaos”; he admitted that Kiev totally lost the war in 2014/15 and then signed the Minsk Agreements “under threat of Russian arms” (false: Kiev was soundly defeated by the Donbass militias); but most of all he admitted Kiev never had any intention of fulfilling the Minsk Agreements.

So Kiev, essentially, is breaking international law: the Minsk Agreements are guaranteed by the UN Security Council resolution 2022 (2015), adopted unanimously. Even the US, UK and France voted “Yes”. So breaking the law is not hard to do, as long as you’re enabled by “big powers”.

And on that invisible “Russian aggression”, well, even Danilov can’t see “the readiness of Russian forces near the border for an invasion, which will take three to seven days.”

Bring on the Dancing Horses

None of the above alters the fundamental fact that the USUK combo – plus the proverbial NATO chihuahuas Poland and the Baltics – are spinning around like mad trying to provoke a war. And the only way to do it is to Release the False Flags. It may be sometime in February, it may be during the Beijing Olympics, it may be before the onset of Spring. But they will come. And the Russians are ready.

The preamble has been staged straight from Monty Python Flying Circus – complete with Crash Test Dummy, a.k.a. POTUS yelling to comedian Zelensky that, in a trashy Mongol revival, “Kiev will be sacked” (to the sound of Bring On the Dancing Horses?); an outraged Zelensky telling POTUS to, c’mon man, back off; and the White House swearing that the US has gamed 18 scenarios for the “Russian invasion” (Lavrov: 17 were written by the intel alphabet soup, the 18^th by the State Dept.)

Cue to non-stop, frantic weaponizing of country 404 – everything from Javelins to MANPADs to overpriced Blackwater/Academi-tinged waves of “advisers”.

Switching away from farce, not to mention misguided scenarios starting from the faulty premise of an “invasion”, the only rational move Moscow may be contemplating is to de facto recognize the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and send in a contingent of peacekeepers.

That, of course, would enrage the neo-con infested War Inc. matrix to intergalactic paroxysm, as it would nullify all those elaborate psyops geared to instill the Fear of God on the unsuspecting victims of the Remixed Khanate of the Golden Horde, burning and looting all the way to…the Hungarian plains?

Then there’s the tricky question of how to de-Nazify Western Ukraine: that will be a strictly Ukrainian matter, with zero Russian involvement.

The ghost of Mackinder is in total freak out mode contemplating in impotence the imperial brilliance of deciding to fight a two-front war against the Russia-China strategic partnership. At least there’s Monty Python to the rescue: the Ministry of Silly Walks has been gloriously revived as the Ministry of Silly Strategies.

Pride of place goes to the phone call placed by Little Blinkie to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi – which contains all the elements of a brilliant comic sketch. It stars with the combo behind that cipher, “Biden”, thinking that the Beijing leadership could influence Putin to not exercise “Russian aggression” against 404. On the sidelines, perhaps there could be some discussion about the “Indo-Pacific” racket.

The plot went downhill when once again Wang Yi – remember Alaska? – made shark fin’s soup out of Blinkie. The key take aways: China totally supports Russia; it’s the US that is destabilizing Europe; and were more sanctions to come, Europe will pay a terrible price, not Russia, which of course can count on a serious helping hand from China.

Now compare it with the phone call between Putin and Macron. It was, to start with, cordial. They discussed “brain-dead” (copyright Macron) NATO. They discussed the proverbial Anglo-Saxon shenanigans. They even discussed the possibility of forming a pan-European group – a sort of anti-AUKUS – with Russia included, curbing the influence of the Five Eyes and bent on avoiding by all means a war in European soil. For the moment, it’s all talk. But the game-changing seeds are all there.

Misguided scenarios insist that Putin skillfully exploited the imperial obsession with the rise and rise of China to re-establish Russia’s sphere of influence. Nonsense. The sphere was always there – and won’t move. The difference is Moscow finally got fed up with the heavy symbolism permeating the unresolved 404 mess: the intermingling of raw Russophobia in Washington and containment/encirclement NATO knocking at the door.

Metaphorically, this may turn out to be the Year of two – sanctioned – Black Water Tigers, one Chinese, one Siberian. They will be harassed non-stop by the headless eagle, blind to its own irreversible decay and always resorting to the serial Hail Mary passes of the only “policy” it knows.

The ultimate danger – especially for the European minions – is that the headless eagle will never let go of its former “indispensable” status without provoking another devastating war. In European soil. Still the tigers persist: in Beijing, before the Games commence, they will be taking yet another step to irreversibly bury the “rules-based international order”.

A Short-Term Geopolitical Forecast

January 20, 2022

By Dmitry Orlov and posted with the author’s permission

Ever since Putin announced his demands for security guarantees from the US and NATO (in brief, stop NATO’s eastward expansion, have NATO retreat to its positions of 1997 and remove offensive weapons from Russia’s immediate vicinity) we have been subjected to a barrage of irrelevancies from Western press:

• Are these security guarantees an ultimatum or a negotiating tool?

• Will the US and NATO agree to them or reject them?

• Will Putin invade the Ukraine or will he be stopped in his tracks through the judicious and timely use of frowning, head-shaking, finger-wagging and tisk-tisking by sundry and assorted Western luminaries?

• If Putin does invade the Ukraine, does this mean that World War III is finally upon us and we shall all surely die?

I hope that I am not alone in being sick and tired of this pathetic, tiresome attempt to throw up a smokescreen and hide the inevitable reality of what is about to unfold. In case it isn’t completely clear to you yet, I would like to spell it all out. I am normally more cautious when making specific predictions, but in this case our immediate future has been carefully plotted out for us by Russia and China, with the US and its assorted puppets reduced to the status of non-playable characters in a video game who can only do one thing: hide behind a dense smokescreen of risible lies.

First, Russian security guarantee demands are not ultimatums. An ultimatum is an “or else” sort of thing, offering a choice between compliance and consequences, whereas in this case both the noncompliance and the consequences will follow automatically. The West and NATO are, for well understood internal political reasons, unable to sign these guarantees; therefore, the consequences will unfold in due course.

Russia has demanded that both the US and NATO put their refusal to agree to the security guarantees in writing; these pieces of paper will be important moving forward. To understand why, we need to take on board the fact that everything within these security guarantees has already been agreed to by the West; namely, the “not an inch to the east” guarantee given to the Russians by the US 30 years ago and the collective security principle agreed to by all members of the OSCE. By signing a document in which they declare their refusal to abide by what they previously agreed to, the US and NATO would essentially declare themselves to be apostates from international law and order. This, in turn, would imply that their own security needs can be disregarded and that instead they deserve to be humiliated and punished.

Further, by putting their refusal in writing, the US and NATO would declare the collective security principle itself—specifically with respect to the US and NATO—to be null and void, meaning that if, for instance, the Bahamas, a sovereign nation since July 10, 1973, decides to reinforce its sovereignty by hosting a Russian missile battery pointed across the Gulf Stream at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the US would have no say in the matter, and if the US did try to speak up, they’d get beat up with this very piece of paper they signed. “Do you feel threatened now?” the Russians would ask; “Well, maybe you should have thought of that when you threatened us by putting your missiles in Poland and Romania.”

The initial stated purpose of the two installations of Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania was to shoot down Iranian missiles, which didn’t exist then, don’t exist now, and never would have taken a giant detour and fly over Poland or Romania in any case. Although the stated purpose of these systems was for missile defense, their launch platforms can also be used to launch offensive strategic weapons: Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear payloads. These Tomahawks are obsolete and the Russians know how to shoot them down extremely well (as they demonstrated in Syria) but this is still very annoying, plus seeding the Russian countryside with pulverized American plutonium would not be good for anyone’s health.

Thus, we should expect bad things to happen to these installations, but we should expect to remain rather ill-informed about the details. While the non-negotiations over the Russian security guarantee demands will be as public as possible (in spite of Western plaintive cries asking that they be held in private) the “technical-military means” which Russia will use to deal with Western noncompliance will not be widely publicized. The Romanian installation might become inoperative due to a newly discovered small volcano nearby; the Polish one might succumb of a freak swamp gas explosion.

A further series of unfortunate accidents may cause the US and NATO to become shy and reticent about encroaching on Russia’s borders. NATO troops stationed in the Baltics, a stone’s throw from St. Petersburg, which is Russia’s second-largest city, might complain of repeatedly hearing the word “Thud!” clearly and loudly annunciated, causing them all to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and evacuated. A US spy plane might experience a slight GPS malfunction causing it to blunder into Russian airspace, get shot down, and have its catapulted pilot sentenced to many years of teaching English to kindergarteners in Syktyvkar or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. US Navy and NATO vessels, already prone to collisions with each other, underwater mountains and barges, might suffer an unusually large number of such mishaps in proximity to the Russian coastline, causing them to shy away from it. A large number of such events, most out of them transpiring out of sight of the public, news of them suppressed in Western press and social media, would force the mighty US military to confront an uncomfortable existential question: “Are the Russians still afraid of us, or are we just jerking each other off here?” Their response will be to go into denial and to jerk each other off harder and faster than ever before.

But if they are indeed just jerking each other off, then what about their policy of containment? What’s to contain Russia and keep it from recreating USSR 2.0?—other than the fact that the Russians aren’t stupid, learned their lesson the first time around, and Mother Russia will no longer allow a bunch of useless non-Russian ingrates to suckle at her ample bosom. “But when is Russia going to invade the Ukraine?” inquiring minds demand to know, especially those who have been paying attention to Western news sources claiming that Russia has amassed 100090 troops on the Ukrainian border (it hasn’t).

The latest theory is that what is preventing Russia from invading is the warm weather. Apparently, it has been unusually warm since 2014, which is why Russian troops haven’t rolled across the Ukrainian border yet. What have they been waiting for? The next ice age that’s due any millennium now? Instead, Russia just got the bits of the Ukraine it wanted—Crimea, the Donbass and a couple of millions of highly trained Russian-speaking professionals—all without staging an invasion, and is now waiting for the rest of the Ukraine to degenerate into its end state as an ethnic theme park and nature preserve. The only thing that’s not going well with this plan is that the Ukraine needs to be demilitarized, as required by Russia’s recent security guarantee demands.

But what if Russia’s security guarantees aren’t met and US/NATO continue stuffing the Ukraine full of weapons, sending in trainers and establishing bases? Well, then, those will need to be destroyed. This can be done by launching some rockets from small ships sailing around in the Caspian Sea, as was done to destroy ISIS bases in Syria; no ground force invasion needed. It won’t take much to prompt US/NATO to evacuate the Ukraine in a panic, seeing as they have already worked out plans for doing so and have announced that they won’t fight to defend it.

If that’s what unfolds, what do you think will happen next? Will the US start a nuclear war over the Ukraine? Umm… how about “NO!!!” Will the US impose “sanctions from hell”? Perhaps, but you have to understand that at this point in time the US and other Western economies can be accurately caricatured as a crystal vase full of excrement parked on the very edge of a high shelf over a hard marble floor. The hope is that nobody is going to sneeze because the sound pressure might cause it to go over the edge. Sanctions from hell do sound like they could cause a bit of a sneeze. Needless to say, the US will continue to talk about sanctions from hell and maybe even pass some legislation so titled, and claim to have sent “a strong message,” but to no effect.

Will Russia act immediately upon acceptance in writing the West’s refusal to provide it with the requested security guarantees? No, there is bound to be a delay. You see, February 4th is barely two weeks away, and that’s just not enough time to start and finish a military action. What’s on February 4th? Why, the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, of course, at which Putin will be the guest of honor while US dignitaries weren’t even invited.

At the Olympics Putin and Xi will be signing a raft of major agreements, one of which may transform the already very strong relationship between China and Russia into an actual military alliance. The tripartite world order announced by Gen. Milley, in which the US, Russia and China figure as equals, will have lasted all of three months. With Russia and China acting as a unit, the SCO, which by now includes almost all of Eurasia, becomes more than just a geopolitical pole. In comparison, the US and the 29 dwarves of NATO do not quite add up to a geopolitical pole and the world once again becomes unipolar but with the polarity flipped.

And so we should not expect any military action to take place between February 4th and February 20th. Should any military mischief occur during the Olympics, which is traditionally a time of peace in the world, it is sure to be a Western provocation, since the Olympics are a traditional time of Western provocations (Georgia during the Beijing Olympics in 2008; the Ukraine during the Russian Olympics in Sochi in 2014). We can be sure that everyone is very much prepared for this provocation and that it will be dealt with very harshly.

The worst kind of provocation would be if NATO advisers actually succeed in goading the hapless and demoralized Ukrainian troops into invading the Donbass. If that happens, there will be two steps to that operation. The first will involve confusing the Ukrainians into walking into a trap. The second will be to threaten to destroy them using Russian long-range artillery from across the Russian border. When that happened previously, the Ukrainian government in Kiev was forced to sign the Minsk agreements that required the Ukrainian military to pull back and the Kiev government to grant autonomy to the Donbass by amending the Ukraine’s constitution.

But since the government in Kiev has shown no intention of fulfilling the terms of these agreements during the intervening years and instead has done its utmost to sabotage them, there is no reason to expect a new round of Minsk agreements to be signed. Instead, it will be the end of the road for Ukrainian statehood. Putin has promised exactly that. NATO advisers are likely to be frustrated in their efforts to cause the Ukrainians to attack: it is preferable for them to sit there being poked and prodded by their NATO handlers and nagged by US/EU officials and spies than to have their best and brightest obliterated by Russian artillery or to face a final round of national humiliation.

After February 20th, however, we should expect some new and interesting domestic distraction. It could have to do with Western financial house of cards/pyramid scheme finally pancaking, or it could be a fun new virus, or natural gas running out and causing a huge humanitarian emergency. Or it could be a combination of these: the virus can be blamed on China, the gas emergency on Russia, and the financial collapse on both. While everyone is distracted, an aircraft carrier or two might go missing, the Aegis Ashore installation in Poland might get totaled by freak swamp gas explosion and so on and so forth. But then nobody would take notice.

There will still be the major existential question nagging the US military/industrial complex: “Are Russia and China still afraid of us or are we just jerking each other off?” I think I know what answer Russia and China would offer: “Don’t worry about us. Just go on jerking each other off.”

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This Is How the U.S. Does ‘Dialogue’

January 13, 2022

Washington will not consider Russian proposals on no expansion of NATO, and has no intention of even discussing the idea. So much for “dialogue”.

by Pepe Escobar,

It was the first high-level Russia-NATO meeting since 2019 – coming immediately after the non sequitur of the U.S.-Russia “security guarantee” non-dialogue dialogue earlier in the week in Geneva.

So what happened in Brussels? Essentially yet another non-dialogue dialogue – complete with a Kafkaesque NATO preface: we’re prepared for dialogue, but the Kremlin’s proposals are unacceptable.

This was a double down on the American envoy to NATO, Julianne Smith, preemptively blaming Russia for the actions that “accelerated this disaster”.

By now every sentient being across Eurasia and its European peninsula should be familiar with Russia’s top two, rational demands: no further NATO expansion, and no missile systems stationed near its borders.

Now let’s switch to the spin machine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s platitudes were predictably faithful to his spectacular mediocrity. On the already pre-empted dialogue, he said it was “important to start a dialogue”.

Russia, he said, “urged NATO to refuse to admit Ukraine; the alliance responded by refusing to compromise on enlargement”. Yet NATO “welcomed bilateral consultations” on security guarantees.

NATO also proposed a series of broad security consultations, and “Russia has not yet agreed, but has not ruled out them either.”

No wonder: the Russians had already noted, even before it happened, that this is noting but stalling tactics.

The Global South will be relieved to know that Stoltenberg defended NATO’s military blitzkriegs in both Kosovo and Libya: after all “they fell under UN mandates”. So they were benign. Not a word on NATO’s stellar performance in Afghanistan.

And then, the much-awaited clincher: NATO worries about Russian troops “on the border with Ukraine” – actually from 130 km to 180 km away, inside European Russian territory. And the alliance considers “untrue” that expansion is “an aggressive act”. Why? Because “it spreads democracy”.

Bomb me to democracy, baby

So here’s the NATO gospel in a flash. Now compare it with the sobering words of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko.

Grushko carefully enounced how “NATO is determined to contain Russia. The United States and its allies are trying to achieve superiority in all areas and in all possible theaters of military operations.” That was a veiled reference to Full Spectrum Dominance, which since 2002 remains the American gospel.

Grushko also referred to “Cold War-era containment tactics”, and that “all cooperation [with Russia] has been halted” – by NATO. Still, “Russia honestly and directly pointed out to NATO that a further slide of the situation could lead to dire consequences for European security.”

The conclusion was stark: “The Russian Federation and NATO do not have a unifying positive agenda at all.”

Virtually all Russophobic factions of the bipartisan War Inc. machine in Washington cannot possibly accept that there should be no forces stationed on European states that were not members of NATO in 1997; and that current NATO members should attempt no military intervention in Ukraine as well as in other Eastern European, Transcaucasian, and Central Asian states.

On Monday in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov had already stressed, once again, that Russia’s red line is unmovable: “For us, it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of NATO.”

Diplomatic sources confirmed that in Geneva, Ryabkov and his team had for all practical purposes to act like teachers in kindergarten, making sure there would be “no misunderstandings”.

Now compare it with the U.S. State Department’s Ned Price, speaking after those grueling eight hours shared between Ryabkov and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman: Washington will not consider Russian proposals on no expansion of NATO, and has no intention of even discussing the idea.

So much for “dialogue”.

Ryabkov confirmed there was no progress. Referring to his didacticism, he had to stress, “We are calling on the U.S. to demonstrate a maximum of responsibility at this moment. Risks related to a possible increase of confrontation shouldn’t be underestimated.”

To say, in Ryabkov’s words, that “significant” Russian effort has been made to persuade the Americans that “playing with fire” is not in their interests is the euphemism of the young century.

Let me sanction you to oblivion

A quick recap is crucial to understand how things could have derailed so fast.

NATO’s not exactly secret strategy, from the beginning, has been to pressure Moscow to directly negotiate with Kiev on Donbass, even though Russia is not mentioned in the Minsk Agreements.

While Moscow was being forced to become part of the Ukraine/Donbass confrontation, it barely broke a sweat smashing a coup cum color revolution in Belarus. Afterwards, the Russians assembled in no time an impressive strike force – with corresponding military infrastructure – in European Russia territory to respond in lightning quick fashion in case there was a Ukrainian blitzkrieg in Donbass.

No wonder an alarmed NATOstan had to do something about the notion of fighting Russia to the last impoverished Ukrainian. They may at least have understood that Ukraine would be completely destroyed.

The beauty is how Moscow turned things around with a new geopolitical jiu-jitsu move. Ukro-dementia encouraged by NATO – complete with empty promises of becoming a member – opened the way for Russia to demand no further NATO expansion, with the withdrawal of all military infrastructure from Eastern Europe to boot.

It was obvious that Ryabkov, in his talks with Sherman, would refuse any suggestion that Russia should dismantle the logistical infrastructure set up in its own European Russia territory. For all practical purposes, Ryabkov smashed Sherman to bits. What was left was meek threats of more sanctions.

Still, it will be a Sisyphean task to convince the Empire and its NATO satrapies not to stage some sort of military adventure in Ukraine. That’s the gist of what Ryabkov and Grushko said over and over again in Geneva and Brussels. They also had to stress the obvious: if further sanctions are imposed on Russia, there would be severe blowback especially in Europe.

But how is it humanly possible for seasoned pros like Ryabkov and Grushko to argue, rationally, with a bunch of amateur blind bats such as Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland and Sherman?

There has been some serious speculation on the timeframe ahead for Russia to in fact not even bother to listen to the American “baby babble” (copyright Maria Zakharova) anymore. Could be around 2027, or even 2025.

What’s happening next is that the five-year extension of the new START treaty expires in February 2026. Then there will be no ceiling for nuclear strategic weapons. The Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline to China will make Gazprom even less dependent on the European market. The combined Russia-China financial system will become nearly impervious to U.S. sanctions. The Russia-China strategic partnership will be sharing even more substantial military tech.

All of that is way more consequential than the dirty secret that is not a secret in the current “security guarantees” kabuki: the exceptionalist, “indispensable” nation is congenitally incapable of giving up on the forever expansion of NATO to, well, outer space.

At the same time, the Russians are very much aware of a quite prosaic truth; the U.S. will not fight for Ukraine.

So welcome to Instagrammed Irrationalism. What happens next? Most possibly a provocation, with the possibility, for instance, of a chemical black ops to be blamed on Russia, followed by – what else – more sanctions.

The package is ready. It comes in the form of a bill by Dem senators supported by the White House to bring “severe costs” to the Russian economy in case Moscow finally answers their prayers and “invades” Ukraine.

Sanctions would directly hit President Putin, Prime Minister Mishustin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Gen Gerasimov, and “commanders of various branches of the Armed Forces, including the Air Force and Navy.”

Targeted banks and financial institutions include Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank, Moscow Credit Bank, Alfa-Bank, Otkritie Bank, PSB, Sovcombank, Transcapitalbank, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund. They would all be cut off from SWIFT.

If this bill sounds like a declaration of war, that’s because it is. Call it the American version of “dialogue”.

بوتين ينتقل الى الهجوم الاستراتيجي الوقائي

الاثنين 10 يناير 2022

 ناصر قنديل

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في مطلع القرن الواحد والعشرين تقدّم الأميركيون في الجوار الروسي بما هو أبعد من مجرد ضمّ دول أوروبا الشرقية إلى الاتحاد الأوروبي، فكان التزامن بين وصول فلاديمير بوتين الى الرئاسة الروسية وبدء الهجوم الأميركي الأوروبي بالثورات الملوّنة وبالقضم الأمني والعسكري لدول الجوار الروسي، من أوكرانيا الى جورجيا ولتوانيا وصولاً الى دول البلطيق، والتلويح بضمّ دول هذا الجوار الى حلف الناتو الذي تقوم عقيدته العسكرية على اعتبار روسيا العدو الأول، وفي كلّ هذه المرحلة الممتدة حتى عام 2015 سنة التموضع الروسي في سورية، كان موقف موسكو السعي لاحتواء الهجوم الأميركي والغربي، والتركيز على بناء القدرات الاقتصادية والعسكرية لروسيا.

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شكل العام 2015 محطة فاصلة في كيفية تعامل روسيا مع الهجوم الأميركي والغربي المستمرّ منذ سقوط جدار برلين وتفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي، فكان قرار الرئيس بوتين بالدخول طرفاً مباشراً في مواجهة الحرب المفتوحة على سورية بقيادة أميركية معلنة، تعبيراً عن قرارة متعددة الأبعاد، أولها القناعة بخطورة المدى الذي بلغه التغوّل الأميركي وخطورة الإنكفاء أمامه، وقد كشف تحالفه المعلن مع الإرهاب من جهة، وحجم تحدّيه للأمن القومي الروسي من جهة موازية، وفي المقابل بعدما ظهر في سورية أنّ مفهوم الدولة الوطنية كمشروع مناهض للمشروع الأميركي هو استثمار قادر على الإنجاز، وأنّ منطقة غرب آسيا التي اختارها الأميركي لإحكام الطوق على روسيا وإيران عبر اللعب على وتر الإسلام السياسي الذي مثلته تركيا بمشروع العثمانية الجديدة، تستطيع ان تكون مقبرة هذا المشروع بتشعّباته التركية والمتطرفة ومن خلفهما الأميركي خصوصاً والغربي عموماً.

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عندما تمّ تحريك أوكرانيا بوجه روسيا في قلب الحرب السورية كانت رؤية موسكو واضحة، وقرارها حازماً، بأن لا تراجع مهما كان الثمن، والروس قد قرأوا جيداً ما كتبه زبينغيو بريجنسكي مستشار الأمن القومي الأميركي السابق في ثمانينات من القرن الماضي، وما قاله عن أوكرانيا نقطة الضعف الروسية في التاريخ والجغرافيا، ولذلك تشبّث الرئيس بوتين بقراره في المضيّ قدماً نحو التموضع في سورية وصولاً للحسم الذي بدأته معركة حلب الفاصلة، وذهب نحو قرار ضمّ شبه جزيرة القرم، وهو القرار الذي تحوّل الى أمر واقع رغم كلّ ما قيل يومها عن أنه لن يمرّ، ورغم كلّ التهديدات الغربية بالعواقب الوخيمة، وقد ثبت لموسكو انّ الكلام الغربي عن التهديدات يبقى حبراً على ورق وبعض العقوبات، ولم يحل كلّ ذلك دون السير قدماً ولو بتقطع بمشروع أنابيب السيل الشمالي لنقل الغاز الروسي الى ألمانيا.

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هذه المرة عندما أثير ملف أوكرانيا بلغة التهديد لروسيا مجدداً، لم ترتبك موسكو في فهم الرسالة، فالمطروح هو تهديد موسكو بالخروج عن اتفاقات مينسك ودعم حكومة أوكرانيا لضمّ مناطق دونباس في شرق أوكرانيا بالقوة، ولم تتردّد موسكو، فلم تنف استعدادها لإجتياح أوكرانيا إذا تمّت إطاحة اتفاقات مينسك، ووضعت معادلة جديدة على الطاولة، لا ضمانات بعدم اجتياح أوكرانيا، بل مطالبة بضمانات لعدم ضمّ الغرب لأوكرانيا وسواها من دول الجوار الروسي الى حلف الناتو، وشيئاً فشيئاً لم تعد القضية أوكرانيا، بل صارت الضمانات الروسية الموثقة المطلوبة من الغرب، ودار الحوار بين الرئيسين الأميركي جو بايدن والروسي فلاديمير بوتين حول هذا الأمر، تمهيداً لحوارات قيد الانطلاق تحت هذا العنوان، تقول موسكو سلفاً إنها غير مستعدة لتقديم ايّ تنازل خلالها عن ثوابت تمثل أمنها القومي.

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جاءت أحداث كازاخستان لتكشف بالمقارنة الزمنية بين الزمن الذي احتاجته القيادة الروسية لاتخاذ قرار التحرك الميداني نحو سورية، والزمن الموازي الذي احتاجته للتحرك الميداني نحو كازاخستان، من سنوات وشهور الى أيام وساعات، تحوّلاً كبيراً في توجهات القيادة الروسية لجهة الإنتقال من الدفاع الاستراتيجي الى الهجوم الاستراتيجي الوقائي، وهو غير الهجوم الاستراتيجي في المطلق، لكنه أحد أشكاله وبداياته.

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Russia to Seek Firm Guarantees of NATO Not Moving Eastward: Foreign Ministry Spox

 December 30, 2021

Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

The Russian Foreign Ministry says Moscow seeks firm security guarantees from the West in the upcoming talks between Russia and NATO member states amid rising tensions over Ukraine.

“During the talks we will seek firm legal guarantees of Russia’s security from the US side, namely that NATO will not move eastwards and that weapons systems threatening Russia will not be deployed near our borders,” Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told a news briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

Zakharova said the talks between Russia and the US-led military alliance are scheduled for January 10, adding that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and his American counterpart will lead the security talks in the Swiss city of Geneva.

“I can report that on January 10 in Geneva, we plan to hold inter-ministerial delegation talks between the US and Russia. The Russian delegation will be led by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, and the US delegation will be led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman,” the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson added.

Russia is also due to hold talks with NATO in Brussels on January 12, before a broader meeting on January 13, which Zakharova said would take place in Vienna.

The January 13 talks will involve the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes the United States and its NATO allies, as well as Russia, Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Monday that talks on a list of security guarantees Moscow wants from Washington regarding the rubbing points in relations with NATO over Ukraine are scheduled to be held between Russian and American officials next month.

Lavrov said in an interview live-streamed on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website that the talks would take place immediately after Russia’s New Year holidays. The first official working day of 2022 in Russia starts on January 10.

Earlier in the month, Russia unveiled a list of security proposals it wants to negotiate with the US, including a pledge that NATO would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has said a number of Russia’s security proposals are obviously unacceptable but that the US will respond with more concrete ideas on the format of any talks.

Tensions have been mounting in eastern Ukraine since November, when several Western media outlets reported that Russia had been amassing troops near the border with the objective of a large-scale military invasion of the country. Moscow denies the allegations, saying it is free to move its troops around within its own borders and that its military buildup is in response to increased NATO activity near its borders.

Russia says it does not seek an armed conflict with Ukraine but “has all the capabilities in place to ensure a full military and technical response to any kind of provocations that might unfold around us.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West against crossing the Kremlin’s red lines by staging military exercises in and sending lethal weaponry to Ukraine.

Moscow has already ordered some 10,000 servicemen who had gathered close to the Ukrainian border to return to their permanent bases.

Source: Agencies

Russia says Nord Stream 2 ready for commissioning

Dec 30 2021

Net Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen

After several western attempts to block its construction, citing “dependence on Russia”, Russia’s Nord Stream 2 is complete and ready for commissioning.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the SPIEF in Saint Petersburg, Russia, June 4, 2021 (Reuters)

Russian Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline is ready for commissioning after its second line from Russia to Germany has been filled with gas, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced Wednesday.

According to Miller, the Russian energy giant has met all long-term gas supply contracts.

“Today at 12:58 Moscow time [09:58 GMT], Gazprom completed the filling of the second thread of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with gas. The first and second threads of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are under operational pressure and are fully ready for operation,” Miller declared.

The CEO also revealed that the company had fulfilled its obligations to transit gas through Ukraine.

“Gazprom fully fulfilled its obligations under the contract for gas transit via Ukraine, our planned volume of 40 billion cubic meters of gas. Today we have already transited 41.5 billion cubic meters through Ukraine,” he said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia ready to supply gas to Europe

President Putin announced that Russia would be ready to immediately start supplying Europe with Gas if the European countries decide to launch Nord Stream 2.

Now, of course, he said, everything depends on Moscow’s partners, European consumers, and Germany.

“As soon as they decide to start work, large volumes, additional volumes of Russian gas will immediately begin to flow to Europe. Let me remind you that this is 55 billion cubic meters per year.”

According to Putin, the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will see gas prices decreasing, not only for Europe but also for Ukraine.

The Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Economic Cooperation said Wednesday Washington’s sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project were pointless, as the construction of the gas pipeline had been completed.

“To be honest, we see no point in Washington’s sanctions policy in conditions when the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has already been built,” the diplomat declared.

In light of the Russian-Ukrainian tensions, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Sunday Russia’s Nord Stream 2 would not be allowed to operate in Ukraine, citing an agreement between Washington and Berlin.

The pipeline, which has been backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the one hand and Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel on the other in recent years, has been criticized by several sides. 

The US and several Eastern European countries are worried that Europe would be too dependent on Russia. 

In mid-November, the German energy regulator had suspended the certification procedure for Nord Stream 2 by requiring the Swiss-based consortium in charge of its operation to create a company under German law.

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