The War and the Future

January 31, 2023

Source

By Batiushka

Foreword: Stop Living in the Past

Since the historic Special Military Operation to liberate the peoples of the Ukraine from their US puppet tyrants in Kiev began on 24 February 2022, the post-1945 settlement has been over. In fact, it should have been over with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or, at latest, at the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. However, the USA was blinded by its exceptionalist hubris as ‘the only Superpower’ and engaged in its latest fantasy of destroying Islam, which it mistakenly saw as a serious rival, arrogantly dismissing Russia, China and India as minor players. So, as a sectarian rogue-state, the USA began its war of terror on all who thought differently, which it so humiliatingly lost. This can be seen in the dramatic pictures of the last flights out of Kabul in 2021.

In other words, after the end of the Soviet Union, which had been born directly out of World War One and formally founded in 1922, the end of the American Union (= NATO) should have followed, and with it the end of the worldwide American Empire. Thus, today NATO is an anachronism, well past its best before date, which is why has begun meddling all over the world, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the Pacific Ocean. NATO is just like the alphabet soup of other US organisations and fronts, IMF, EU, WTO, OECD, G7, G20 and UN, with its mere five Security Council members, including minor Great Britain and France. What might await us as a result of the liberation of the Ukraine on the centenary of the 1945 settlement, in 2045?

1. After the Ukraine

First of all, probably within the next fifteen months, we shall see the full liberation of the Ukraine. With the eastern Novorossija half of the Ukraine returning to Russia, the remaining half, Central and Western Ukraine, perhaps minus Zakarpattia (returning to Hungary as an autonomous region under the Balogh brothers) and Chernivtsy (returning to Romania), will return to being Malorossija, its capital in Kiev. Thus, the way will at last be open to form the Confederation of Rus’. The at last freed East Slav lands and peoples, Eurasian Russia and the Eastern European Belarus and Malorossija, could together form such a Confederation of Rus’, with a total population of just under 200 million.

2. The Reconfiguration of Eurasia

After the Ukrainian question has been solved and the USA has lost its political, military and, above all, economic power to bully the rest of the world, all of us in Eurasia will be able to start living in our new-found Freedom and building Justice and Prosperity for all. We foresee first of all the expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

a. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)

At present consisting of the Russian Federation, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the EEU will surely be joined by a host of other countries, including firstly China, by now reunited with Taiwan, and Mongolia, then India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Cambodia. They will be followed by the rest of Asia (60% of world population). Thus, the EEU will largely replace the present SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation). However, true to its Eurasian name, the Economic Union will also receive and grant applications from a new organisation in North-Western Eurasia. This could be called the European Economic Alliance (EEA). This could be formed through the economic co-operation of all forty-four countries in the extreme western tip of Eurasia, to be known simply as ‘Europe’. This will include what was once known as Western, Central, Northern and Southern Europe, representing nearly 7% of world population.

b. The European Economic Alliance (EEA)

This Confederation could be formed as EU coercion collapses, with Brussels disarmed as the American Union of NATO dissolves. This will follow the long-overdue withdrawal of US occupying forces from Europe and the closure of their bases. All there will find freedom again. The founding member of the EEA would perhaps be Hungary and its Capital could be fixed in Budapest in honour of Hungarian courage and its geographical closeness to the resource-rich Confederation of Rus’, the gateway to Eurasia, on which the EEA will be so dependent. The Budapest Parliament building would make a fine administrative headquarters for the EEA. Other countries would follow Hungary like dominos, possibly in the following ten phases, after rebellions in each European country, one after another overthrowing their corrupt US-installed puppet-elites. This would resemble the rebellions that took place with a domino effect in the then Soviet Eastern bloc between 1989 and 1991.

i. The Western Balkan Four

After the European Economic Alliance has been founded by Hungary, it would next be joined by Serbia. No longer held under the heel of the US bully, the ancestrally Serbian province of Kosovo would return to Serbia. However, this would only be possible if its Albanian inhabitants, like those also in Montenegro and North Macedonia, first moved to Albania. For this to happen they would have to be attracted by a huge package of investment and development to pull Albania out of grinding poverty and chronic corruption and into prosperity, to make int into a magnet for Albanians. We suggest that China could invest in the massive rebuilding, and building, of infrastructure in Albania, as China already has a history of links with Albania. With such a just solution, all Albanians could at last live decently and work in decent jobs in their own country and not be forced to live like cuckoos in the countries of others. On this Albania could join the EEA. At this point Montenegro, (North) Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina could also join the EEA. These countries would perhaps form together with Serbia a Trade and Cultural Federation, perhaps to be called Yuzhnoslavia, though each would absolutely retain its political independence. Investment in Yuzhnoslavia could come from the Confederation of Rus’.

ii. The Eastern Balkan Three

After their example, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria would almost immediately join the EEA, attracted by links with Eurasia and the resources and linked culture of the Confederation of Rus’.

iii. The Greek World

They would naturally be followed by Greece and Cyprus, in the latter of which Russian investment is already huge. These three phases, i, ii and iii, of linking up with the Confederation of Rus, but remaining as sovereign nations within the EEA, would complete the reconstitution and restoration of the Orthosphere. This is the Orthodox Christian Commonwealth, whose natural centre has for 500 years been Russia.

iv. The Former Habsburgs

Next would come Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Lands and Austria.

v. Italia

They would naturally be followed by Italy, San Marino and Malta.

vi. Germania

The real turning-point would come if these countries were followed by the central domino of Germany. Germany, fixed between Western and Eastern Europe, knows that it cannot live without Russia and countries and markets to its east. It would immediately be followed by Germany-dependent Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium.

vii. Nordia

Closely linked to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and finally Finland would follow almost at once.

viii. Gallia

After Germany, France, which is so dependent on Germany, with Monaco and then Switzerland and Liechtenstein, would also be obliged to join the EEA in fairly quick succession.

ix. Iberia

Spain, with newly-independent Catalonia, and then Andorra and Portugal would swiftly follow France.

x. The Isolationists, East and West

Now we come to the end of this game of dominoes. The last mohicans, the once irreductibly isolationist Russophobes, the Johnson fantasy, would realise that they could no longer remain alone. The people would revolt against their elite-imposed poverty and depopulation and the absurd propaganda down the generations. First, Estonia, under pressure from Finland, and then in a chain, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland could join the EEA. However, the first three would have to throw off their US puppet-elites and at once grant human rights to their Russian minorities.

Then, under economic pressure from Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, the British Isles and Ireland, would at last follow. Thus, now separated into their four natural components, there would appear an independent England, freed after a millennium of the delusional yoke of the invented ‘Great Britain’ (an invention on a similar scale of delusion to the old ‘Ukraine’) and of the British Establishment. Immediately would follow newly-independent Scotland and Wales and a united Ireland. After the collapse of the oppressive British Establishment elite and their London-run institutions, the people and the pragmatists would proclaim that there is no alternative to co-operating with Eurasia through joining the EEA. All the more so, given the debt crisis, chaos, division and poverty in the USA, the former British colony which had become Britain’s colonial and ideological master. Step by step, opened archives would reveal the MI5 and MI6 manipulations like Litvinenko, MH 17, the Skripals, the Kerch Bridge explosion and the Nordstream destruction and how the tabloid media (the whole British media, including the State-run mouthpiece of the BBC) were used to perpetrate these lies.

3. Outside Eurasia: Continental Councils, the Inter-Continental G30 and The World Alliance

Thus, a united Eurasia (some 70% of world population) will stand together with Africa (17% of world population), Latin America (South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean – 8% of world population), and the small Northern America (under 5% of world population) and even smaller Oceania (a tiny 0.5% share of world population, with its economies increasingly dominated by China. This would only be natural justice, as the Pacific islanders originated from Taiwan). Each Continent could elect a Council, creating a Eurasian Council, an African Council, a Latin American Council, a Northern America Council (basically, the USA, or whatever it will break up into, with Canada and Greenland) and an Oceanian Council (Australia, New Zealand, Western New Guinea, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia). Each Council would be made up of all the nations in its Continent.

On an Inter-Continental level, there could also be formed the G30. This would be composed of all 30 nations of the world which each have a population of over 50 million + Australia, representing all Oceania, and would replace BRICS, the G7 and the G20. These nations in order of size at present are: China, India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Confederation of Rus, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam, DR Congo, Turkey, Iran, Germany, Korea, Thailand, France, Italy, Tanzania, South Africa, England, Myanmar, Kenya, Colombia and Australia. 18 are in Eurasia (13 in Asia and 5 Europe-based), 7 in Africa, 3 in Latin America and 1 each in Northern America and Oceania). The composition could change as the populations of new countries grow to more than 50 million or alternatively some contract to fewer than 50 million.

On a global level, the 235 nations of the world, including the 143 with populations of under ten million and the 75 with under one million, could assemble in a World Alliance, replacing the old New-York UN. The Capital of the Alliance could be fixed in a central position, not in an off-centre position like New York, but in the Eurasian heartland, for example, in Yalta in the Crimea. Its Security Council could be composed of the ten most populous nations, essentially all regional powers in the new multipolar world: China (also speaking for Oceania), India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, the Confederation of Rus’ (the only country with the vast majority of its population in Europe, which it would therefore represent), Bangladesh and Mexico. Six are in Eurasia, two in Latin America, one in Africa and one in Northern America.

Afterword: Towards the Future

Fantasy? Fiction? Faction? Frankly, if only 10% of the above came to pass, that in itself would be world-transforming. And if you dismiss the above out of hand, just think for a moment of how all would have mocked predictions of the generational chain of World War I (1914), World War II (1939), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and in quick succession the fall of the Soviet bloc, and, on the centenary of World War I, in 2014, the US-orchestrated coup in Kiev which has led directly to the world-changing events which began in the Ukraine in 2022, the centenary of the USSR. Yet it all happened. In 2021 nobody had predicted the events in the Ukraine either, for nobody could have imagined the Mariana Trench depth of the suicidal stupidity of the Anglozionist elite.

A generation ago, as a Russian Orthodox priest stranded in Western Europe, the Northern Sahara, as so much of it seems to be, I did not dream of any of this. Would I live to see the revival of corruption-bound, post-Soviet Russia, enslaved to and humiliated by the West and all its vices? My impression then was that the whole world was living on borrowed time. Then came the miracle of the events of August 2000 in Russia and the appearance of President Putin. After the shamefulness and shamelessness of the CIA’s useful idiot, the drunkard Yeltsin, Putin was a miracle. And I began to think that I would live to see the future. And since 24 February 2022 I have been living it. The English Shakespeare once wrote in his Twelfth Night: What’s to come is still unsure’. I will agree, but I will still try to pierce the darkness to glimpse the light.

31 January 2023

Game-Changing Russia

January 17, 2023

Source

By Batiushka

Meanwhile, Circuses

While America is prepared to pay for the last Ukrainian to die for America – the Western world is talking about something else: Harry Windsor has revealed the family secret. The family secret was that Harry is an idiot, whose strings are pulled by an American actress. Now the secret is out. Harry has himself told the whole world he is an idiot whose strings are pulled by an American actress.

And Game-Changing Tanks?

While Western Europe is prepared to pay for the last Ukrainian to die for Western Europe – Germany, France, Finland, the UK and some other countries are prepared to get rid of some more of their old armoured vehicles and even tanks, palming them off on the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime. Thus, the UK is thinking of sending 14 of its 25-year old Challenger 2 tanks. How the UK will train Ukrainians to operate them, how it will supply enough ammunition for them to fire, how they will supply the mechanics and spare parts to repair them, how – and when – they will deliver them to Poland and then get them to the Kiev front, over 1,000 kilometres further away, nobody can tell us. Meanwhile, the British Army Chief of General Staff, Sir Patrick Sanders, is complaining. ‘Giving Kiev tanks means we won’t have enough for ourselves’. After all they do cost £8 million each and there are only 227 of them in the much-underfunded British Army anyway.

Nobody has told the British Army that after one Russian missile all 14 of these obsolescent ‘wonder-weapons’ will go up in smoke before they ever get to the front. £112 million gone. No wonder Ukrainian refugees are returning to Kiev to get proper medical treatment that the grossly underfunded and strikebound British Health System cannot provide them with. Nobody has told the British Army or any EU Army that Russia is fighting a war of attrition. Given Russian air superiority, far superior artillery, drones, missiles and its 15,000 tanks, the Kiev forces, their mercenaries and all their equipment are being wiped out. Worse still, none of the Western hack-journalists, presstitutes to the core, has yet explained why ‘the victorious Kiev forces’ need ever more Western armoured vehicles and tanks. You read it here first: It is because all the other ‘game-changing’ armoured vehicles, tanks and equipment have already been destroyed. Now at least astronomers know what a black hole looks like. It looks like the Kiev regime. Yes, black holes really are game-changing because you can get sucked into one.

The Score: Russia 27: Poland, Romania, Hungary 0

In the face of NATO (= US) aggression, surely there is only one choice left for Russia – to liberate all 27 Ukrainian regions (and maybe even elsewhere too). I have to confess that I was never in favour of Russia taking the far-west Galicia. ‘They can go to Poland’. I was thinking of the old Russian curse: ‘Go to hell – and take Galicia with you’. But, actually, I am now thinking that Russia should take the lot, Crimea and the four partially liberated ones nearly done, 22 to go. The fact is that as long as a single piece of the Ukraine is under Nazi control, it will be a threat to the Russian Federation.

A very reasonable but minimalist map of Russian options in the Ukraine I found on Big Serge thoughts on Substack. it shows all the regions which Batiushka suggests Russian might have to liberate.

A very reasonable but minimalist map of Russian options in the Ukraine I found on Big Serge thoughts on Substack. it shows all the regions which Batiushka suggests Russian might have to liberate.

On top of that a lot of the Nazi nasties have left anyway. Moreover, if Russia does liberate Galicia, the remaining Nazis will run away to Poland, so there will be none left and Russian forces can occupy the lot. It is a self-liberating process. Russia threatens and they go, all by themselves. In any case, why should Poland get anything out of it? What have they done to deserve it? Just like the Germans, we too have never believed in Greater Poland. Currently, the Poles are planning to build a wall along the border with the Russian Kaliningrad enclave. The Russians there are only too pleased and a local Russian company has offered to sell Poland the cement. Keeping the US-run ‘New Europe’ (as Rumsfeld called it) Poles out seems like an excellent idea. Especially if the Poles are going to do the job for us at their own expense.

Frankly, the same applies to Romania. Why should they get anything out of it? They allowed the Americans in. They claim North Bukovina, Chernovtsy, but that is mainly Ukrainian. Let it remain so. We do not believe in Greater Romania either. And why not liberate Moldova (minus Transdniestria) as well and make it an Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation? Apart from the 15% in Moldova who are Russian and the 5% who are Gagauz and very pro-Russian, there are plenty of Moldovans who do not want to have anything to do with corrupt Romania and the corrupt EU and regret the old USSR. An Autonomous Republic of Moldova within the Russian Federation with cheap gas and oil sounds a lot more attractive than being a minor province of corrupt US-run Romania.

Then there is the case of ‘Zakarpatie’ – Transcarpathia, that extreme south-western province with its ridiculous Kievan imperialist name. There is only one place which is trans/across the Carpathians, and that is Kiev itself. Now the real name of Transcarpathia is Carpatho-Rus, though it has also been called Subcarpathian Rus and, in the West, Ruthenia, which is a corruption of ‘Rusinia’, the land of the Rusins (Ukrainians transliterate it as Rusyns), that is, the land of the Carpatho-Russians. The Rusins speak their own distinctive language, of which, arguably Slovak and Ukrainian are dialects. It is the historic cradle of Russian Orthodoxy, baptised a century before 988 and before Kiev. I have been to Carpatho-Rus, but on the Slovak side (the Polish side around Sanok was genocided or scattered by Fascist Poles in 1947), and there I have very good friends.

True, Hungary has been handing out Hungarian/EU passports there for some years (just as Romania sold virtually everyone in Moldova a Romanian/EU passport – cost $10 (1)). True, today’s Transcarpathia is basically run by the Balogh brothers and they are pro-Hungarian. Some say that Transcarpathia should return to Czechoslovakia, to which Woodrow Wilson attached it in 1919. However, the patronising and disliked Czechs ran it as a colony until 1938, when Hungary started running it again, as they had under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Czechoslovakia no longer exists anyway. As for Slovakia next-door, it appears to have no interest whatsoever in Carpatho-Russia, even though there is a Carpatho-Russian minority in Eastern Slovakia (2). Well, there are also quite a few people, like Fr Dmitry Sidor in Uzhgorod, who believe that Carpatho-Russia should be part of Russia, just as St Aleksij (Kabaljuk) pleaded it to be with Stalin in 1945.

However, apart from all this, there is another reason why the Russian Federation should take all the Ukraine. If it were to invade the Ukraine from the south-west, along the Black Sea coast west of Odessa, and from the north-western corner of the Belarussian border, Union forces could effectively cut the Ukraine off from the NATO/Nazi West permanently. Roll out the barbed wire along the border with Poland, Hungary and Romania. Letting the Nazis cross first, and then no Western armoured vehicles and tanks would have to be destroyed by the Russians. They would not even be able to get into the Ukraine and would remain stuck in Poland. Save your missiles! A strategic move like this would isolate Kiev from its Western puppeteers and all Russia would have to do is sit back until the cities of the Ukraine, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Vinnitsa, Poltava and the rest, voluntarily surrendered one by one, without any street fighting or bombardments required.

But what do I know? Rumours abound that the Russian Black Sea Fleet is preparing an amphibious landing in the south-west near Odessa in order to liberate and protect Russian Transdniestria. Rumours abound that a joint Russian-Belarussian Union force is set to liberate the Ukraine from the north-west. A pincer movement, cutting all the Ukraine off from the Nazi West, making the whole of the Ukraine into a giant cauldron? Tempting, surely. But they are only speculations. Who knows outside the President and the General Staff? Of course, if Russia were now minded to take all of the Ukraine as a result of Western aggressiveness, perhaps it ought to liberate Moldova and the three Neo-Nazi Baltic statelets as well? But again, who knows? I may well be wrong.

The Future of Russia

Let us leave Nazi fantasists to their virtual world, the video-game in which they take over the universe, in which Kiev rules Russia and Taiwan rules China, and Iran, Afghanistan and Syria voluntarily surrender to US neocons, whom they worship as cargo-cult saviours. Let us rather turn our attention to reality.

The fact is that after over 300 years of fawning Russian obsessions with the West, to the point of creating its own inferiority complex, Russia is now totally disillusioned with the lieing, thieving, backstabbing, slanderous, devious and treacherous West. This is an amazing turnaround. It means that the USA and its vassal-states in Western Europe and chimpanzee-imitators elsewhere are going to be forced to eat humble-pie and accept the new reality, that they are not exceptional at all, that they are completely outcivilised, outclassed, outpeopled, outgunned and outresourced by the Global East, South and North. In the dedollarised world the West is isolated. The West’s defeat in the Ukraine is simply the last nail in the coffin of the arrogant, ignorant, ethnocentric, colonialist, triumphalist and thoroughly corrupted West of the last 500 years and more.

The contours of the future Russia are still not clear. The Westernised Russia of Peter I, where the aristocrats spoke French or latterly English by preference, and the Sovietised Russia of Lenin and Stalin, who spoke with the language of the grandson of a German Jewish rabbi by preference, and of the old Western Putin, who spoke of joining the concert of the Western Nations and even NATO, is finished. The Illusions that we must be like the West, that the West is our model, are gone. The West contemptuously turned up its nose at primitive and barbaric Russia, so Russia embraced China and the rest of the Non-Western world, and liked it.

What is clear, however, is that Russians want some things to remain from the past. The first thing is that they do not want any treacherous oligarchs/ aristocrats, but want a meritocratic elite that patriotically serves the nation rather than itself. They also want a fair social contract, greater equality between rich and poor, with a political system that is accountable and not corrupt, they want social justice, free education and healthcare, decent pensions, a working infrastructure and reasonable housing.

And they want protection for Russians outside Russia, Belarus and Malorossija (the New Ukraine). The New Russia is the only country that is leading the struggle for liberation from the Western Yoke, its foreign policy is leading the global majority of Non-Western countries. Eventually, it will lead Western Europe too, though that must first liberate itself from US tyranny and all its perversions and come to adopt a realistic view of itself and its limitations in the real world of today. Then there will be a Common European Home, but one run from Moscow and Berlin, which is also an integral part of Eurasia, not Euramerica. Russian prophecies say that after Putin comes a new Tsar. We shall see.

17 January 2023

Notes:

1. A few years ago for a bet a Moldovan parishioner of mine paid the Romanians $10 for a passport in the name of Mickey Mouse. He duly got his passport and won his bet. So desperate were the Romanians to lay claim to Moldova.

2. From which Andy Warhol was descended.

Unconditional Surrender Is Now Russia’s Goal (Gonzalo Lira)

DECEMBER 09, 2022

Die Einsatzgruppen – Death Squads – Eastern Europe: 1941-44

DECEMBER 05, 2022

Source

By Francis Lee

During the Second World War in Europe, particularly in the East, special corps of mobile German extermination units known as “Einsatzgruppen” (literally “operational groups”) were recorded has having exterminated well over one million civilians, primarily in mass shootings in the greater Soviet Union and also included the Baltics, Romania, and Poland.

Whenever Nazi Germany’s army marched East it immediately occupied and ethnically cleansed and secured the newly seized territories. Their principal tasks were to identify and neutralize potential enemies to German rule, seizing important sites, preventing sabotage, recruiting collaborators, and establishing intelligence networks. The Einsatzgruppen – see the glossary below – was principally charged with this grisly task. They also killed some ‘unreliable’ civilians who were perceived as their enemies. Together with Einsatzgruppen various other units included the Waffen SS, Order Police, and local collaborators who ‘liquidated’ thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites.

With the start of Hitler’s “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly increased. The main targets were the Communist Party and Soviet state officials, Roma, and above all Jews of any age or gender. Under the cover of war and using the pretext of military necessity, the Einsatzgruppen viewed this term in the glossary organized and helped to carry out the shooting of more than half a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, in the first nine months of the war.

The 3,000 personnel of all four Einsatzgruppen groups viewed this term in the glossary and did not conduct these killings alone. Units of the Waffen SS, Order Police, Wehrmacht, allied Romanian forces and local collaborators willingly gave them aid and succour. The latter collaborators helped to identify victims as well as kill them. Many of the killers and victims actually knew one another as neighbours and colleagues. For example, over two days in September 1941, a small detachment of Einsatzgruppe C along with larger units of Waffen SS, Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliaries conducted a mass shooting of Jews in Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), a ravine outside Kyiv (Kiev). According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. When occupied territories came under civilian control, stationary offices of the SS and Police replaced the Einsatzgruppen and continued to conduct mass shootings.

One particular case involved a family caught up in the general chaos. The daughter – a girl named, Frima – and her family were confined in a Jewish ghetto; in which the Nazis used her father as an interpreter. He later perished. By pretending not to be Jews, Frima, her mother, and sister escaped a German mobile killing unit massacre. They were later discovered and jailed. Again, her mother devised an escape. Frima’s mother and sister were smuggled to Romania, while Frima wandered in search of safekeeping until her mother could arrange to smuggle her out. In Romania, they were reunited and liberated. As cited in the United States – see below.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. Author(s): United States Washington, DC

Often referred to as an Aktion, a massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or ordered to report to a central destination. The victims were then marched or transported to the killing site. If a mass grave had not already been dug, the victims were forced to dig one. They were stripped of clothes and valuables and driven in groups to the pit. The Einsatzgruppen view this term in the glossary and their assistants either shot the victims at the edge so that they fell in or forced them into the grave to be shot. Friends and families often had to watch their loved ones die before them.

The mass shootings were resource-intensive, requiring many shooters and escort guards as well as guns, ammunition, and transport. Concerns about the inefficiency of the shootings and their psychological impact on the shooters led to the development of special vans outfitted with engines that pumped carbon monoxide into sealed passenger compartments. Jews were packed into the compartments, then driven to a mass grave, and asphyxiated during the journey. It took much longer to kill very large groups of victims with the gas vans, however. The Einsatzgruppen view this term in the glossary where personnel were required to remove bodies and clean the compartments. Throughout the German occupation of seized Soviet territories, mass shootings continued to be the preferred method of murdering Jews. At least 1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million Holocaust victims died in mass shootings or gas vans in Soviet territory.

Latvia?

Barbaric as the German atrocities were, they were to be aided and abetted by elements of the local indigenous populations. Particularly in the Baltics and Ukraine.

‘’They say that time is a great healer, but to the Jewish community in Latvia, the events of 1941 will never be forgotten.  As many as 70,000 were murdered, and the Museum “Jews in Latvia” commemorates this terrible time in Latvian history.  But the Museum does more than this and tells the story of the Jewish Community from its inception to the present day.’’ (Phillip Houseley – 2018).

Lithuania?

‘’Almost all Jews living in Lithuania were annihilated from 1941 until 1944, but there is a reluctance among Lithuanians to discuss the collaboration with the Nazis that enabled slaughter on such a massive scale. Participation – mainly by the Lithuanian police in Holocaust crimes – is acknowledged to have occurred but does not attract the attention it warrants. More references are made to the few locals who saved Jews and can be numbered among the righteous among the nations than to the vastly larger number of Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. Collaborators are largely perceived as “victims” in the national discourse.’’

Bar-Ilana University (Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies)

­Estonia

The Jewish community was amongst the first to be rounded up in accordance with the General plan Ost (East) which required the removal of 50% of Estonian citizens. With the invasion of the Baltics, it was the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltic countries as their main area of mass genocide.

Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be exterminated. Out of the approximately 4,300 Jews in Estonia before the war, between 950 and 1,000 were entrapped by the Nazis. An estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. There have been 7 known ethnic Estonians—Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas, Aleksander Laak, and Ervin Viks—who have faced trials for crimes against humanity. Since the reestablishment of Estonian independence, the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity has been established. Markers were put in place for the 60th anniversary of the mass executions that were carried out at the Lagedi, Vaivara and Klooga (Kalevi-Liva) camps in September 1944.

Ukraine

The Dynamic Duo:

Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) Statue in Ternopil

Leader of the (OUN-B) Bandera remains even today a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with many Ukrainians principally in the West of the country – hailing him as a role model hero, martyred liberation fighter, whilst other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east of the Dnieper condemn him as a fascist, Nazi collaborator who was, together with his followers, responsible for the large-scale massacres of up to 100,000 Polish, Jewish and Russian civilians in western Ukraine in 1943-44. Bandera was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in Munich in 1959.

Looking back the name Bandera initially became synonymous with Ukrainian nationalism during the Soviet era. Stephan Bandera was born in 1909 in the town of Trostianec, near Stryj. His father was a Greek Catholic priest. He attended elementary school in Sokal and high school in Stryj. While still in high school he became a member of UVO, the veterans’ organization of Ukrainian nationalists from the First World War. He became commander of the OUN for Western Ukraine, and Poland. There is little doubt that Stefan Bandera was an extreme rightist in his political outlook. In 1934, he and confederate Mikola Lebed planned and organized the assassination of Pieracky, the Polish Minister of the Interior, accused by the Ukrainians of anti-Ukrainian acts. He was first sentenced to death and then the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. His trial took place in 1935 after which he was committed to the Holy Cross jail where he remained until 1939. It is alleged that his sentence was commuted to avoid an uprising of Ukrainian nationalists in Eastern Poland and the Ukraine.

The circumstances surrounding Bandera’s escape or release from Polish prison in 1939 are not clearly known. Once free, Bandera resumed his leadership of OUN in the homeland. After the invasion of Poland (1939), the OUN collaborated with Germany against the Poles and, later, against the Soviet Union.

In early summer 1940 the OUN split, and Bandera became the overall chief of the greater part of the organization. For some time, the OUN was composed of two factions, both claiming the name. The dissident group, comprising about 80 percent of the organization, was called OUN-Bandera [OUN(B)] or the Bandera group. The larger faction OUN-B was headed by Stefan Bandera and the smaller faction OUN-M (headed by Andre Melnik. Both OUN factions created their own special forces units, named “Rolland” and “Nachtigall.”

Realizing that the aspiration for national independence was uppermost in the minds of a majority of Ukrainians, the Third Reich promised at the beginning of World War II that the Ukrainians would be freed from Soviet domination and could found a Ukrainian state. When the Germans attacked Russia, many members of the OUN followed the Germans’ advance eastward. Bandera remained in Cracow.

A “Ukrainian State” was founded by Bandera on 10 June 1941. The proclamation of the “state” took place in an atmosphere of great solemnity, with Hitler’s representatives participating. The German occupation forces at the time needed agents and informers who were conversant with conditions in Poland and could help the Hitlerite invaders. They could find no better men for the job than Bandera and his followers. Bandera launched the campaign which was to make him master of the OUN. To achieve this, he found it necessary, first, to compromise the old leadership headed by Melnyk. A simple denunciation to the Gestapo was sufficient to cause persons objectionable to Bandera to be arrested and liquidated at his order.

Over 25,000 Poles, Jews and Russians were destroyed in a single operation at the border of the Carpathian Ukraine. The Hungarian gendarmes drove these Jews out from the area which had been occupied by Hungary with Hitler’s consent. At the border, they were received by “special” elements of the Bandera militia, which drove them to unknown parts, destroying all of them en route. Altogether, during the 5 weeks of its existence, the Bandera’s “state” destroyed over 5,000 Ukrainians, 15,000 Jews, and several thousand Poles.

The “Ukrainian State” of Stepan Bandera ended its short but ignominious existence in August 1941, when it was announced in Lvov that Western Ukraine had been incorporated as the “District of Galicia” in the “General Governorship” (occupied Poland).

And when Bandera had done his duty, he and some of his assistants were dispatched to a concentration camp. The Gestapo had its own candidates for the posts of gauleiters and governors of the Ukraine. At any rate, Bandera was taken to Berlin and placed under house arrest there. He was shortly transferred to the Prinz Albrecht Strasse Gestapo jail reserved for important political prisoners. In 1942 Bandera and several other OUN leaders were transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Against the Soviets – 1943-1945

In 1943 the OUN(B) quit the collaboration game and turned on the Germans in an effort to establish an independent Ukraine free of Nazi or Soviet control. The Nazis did not recognize the government created by the part of OUN headed by Stepan Bandera on 10 June 1943. At the beginning of 1943 the OUN(b) started to create UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army – led by Roman Shukeyvich (see below) – that started the underground struggle when the Red Army entered the territory of the Western Ukraine. At all stages of UPA existence, the Soviet regime with all its political, military, and security structures (partisan, army, NKVD units, and internal forces), remained the number one enemy of the Ukrainian nationalists.

The population was still resentful for the recent genocidal famine in Ukraine. The war between UPA and Soviet military and security structures coincided in time with the war of the United Nations (including the Soviet Union) against the fascist bloc, although these wars are entirely different by nature and origin.

During the war years, at the time that Bandera was incarcerated in a German concentration camp, there sprang up in the Ukraine a number of fighting units. Some of these units united under the banners of Taras BULBA-BOROVETS, OUN/Melnyk and OUN/Bandera. Since it was apparent to all that there should be a unified command, all three commands tried to unite, but OUN/Bandera, being possibly strongest in number, decided that it should lead all others. It was at this time that there was considerable fratricide committed. Rumour has it that the entire general staff of Tares BULBA-BOROVETS was liquidated by OUN/Bandera, as well as a number of those who backed Colonel Andrew Melnyk – among the latter two OUN/Melnyk leaders, STSIBORSKY and SENYK-HRYBIVSKY.

Roman Shukeyvich (1907-1959)

The controversial (sic!) Ukrainian national hero (sic!). The statue below was a monument to Roman Shukhevych military Commander in Chief to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Stepan Bandera, however, was the political wing of the movement the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) who along with Bandera was assassinated by unknown, possibly Soviet assassins.

Shukeyvich’s statue has stood at the entrance of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, since the mid-1970s. Shukhevych is lionized by some for his fight for Ukrainian independence against Poland, the Soviet Union and later Germany. But critics of the monument say it glorifies a Nazi henchman who sided with Germany in hopes of winning independence for Ukraine.

The Ukrianian diaspora is still in evidence and in high places in the Ukraine. Canadian Foreign Secretary, ­Christiya Freeland is a prominent critic of Russia who was banned from the country in 2014. She happens also to be a friend of Victoria Nuland, and both are passionate supporters of her coup in Ukraine. Ms Freeland is co-chair of the Lima Group which is apparently dedicated to the overthrow of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

In the somewhat murky political background of Ms Freeland, she had long since been an advocate of militant Ukrainian nationalism; this followed very much in the family tradition. Some interesting facts dug out by some Polish and Australian journalists investigating past and present Ukrainian threats to Polish sovereignty in Galicia-Ukraine. “This Canadian statement is discreditable,  not only for its ignorance of the ‘surprises’  in the Polish and German records of World War II.  It’s also a declaration of comfortable complacency in not investigating how much Freeland aims to revive the takeover of Polish Galicia, with Canadian money and arms, which her Nazi grandfather tried with German money and arms.”

See Further: German military records have been found in a Polish government archive in Warsaw revealing that, Michael Chomiak maternal grandfather of Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, volunteered to serve in the German invasion of Poland long before the German Army attacked the Soviet Union and invaded Ukraine.’’

John Helmer

The German Army (Officers) reaches Ukraine 1941. They seem to have been welcomed by most of the local population in Vinnitsiya, Ukraine.

There is a whole gallery of gruesome pictures of native populations in Eastern Europe, the worst being carried out by local militias. See below, the ‘last Jew in Vinnytsia’ Ukraine murdered by the local Ukrianian militia.

See Rare Historical Photographs

The above picture is not untypical. There were worse, but for the sake of decency and the deceased’s family I declined to publish them.

On Ukrainian ‘Refugees’

November 25, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Introduction

All nationalities have contemptuous or humorous words for their neighbours. Often these words come from the differences between them, especially as regards diet or dress. For example, the Americans call Germans ‘krauts’ (because they eat sauerkraut – pickled cabbage) and the British ‘limeys’ (from British sailors who ate limes), the French call the English ‘rosbifs’ (roast beefs) and the English call the French ‘frogs’. However, behind these terms there lie all kinds of unpleasant associations and stereotypes, which define all the worst characteristics of a particular people, but certainly do not apply to the mass or majority of that people. Thus, krauts are also square-headed fools, limeys are the lowest of the lowest criminal class (such were 18^th century British sailors), rosbifs are beer-swilling (football) hooligans (the sort who buy, but do not read, British tabloids (1)) and frogs are people who will eat anything without distinction, as they are obsessed by their stomachs.

Khokhly

As for the Ukrainians, they call Russians ‘moskali’ (Muscovites) and the Russians call Ukrainians ‘khokhly’. A ‘moskal’ is also a bigoted Great Russian chauvinist with a superiority complex, who despises provincials in the Ukraine who used to have a certain hairstyle called a ‘khokhol’ (literally a forelock, a style revived by some hair-conscious Ukrainian nationalists today). However, as a very good half-Polish, half-Ukrainian friend explained to me years ago: ‘Ukrainians live in the Ukraine, khokhly (plural of khokhol) live anywhere they can’. What he meant by this is that the lowest sort of Ukrainians are not patriots at all, but have no principles and will take advantage of anything they can get, as they do not have any responsibilities or respect for others and do not have to work. In a word, khokhly swim with the tide and will sell you their grandmothers, if they think they can make a bit of money out of it, at the same time despising the buyer as an idiot.

For example, you may have heard of the expression ‘Russian brides’. The term has rightly become a synonym for ‘gold-digger’. Well, most of them are Ukrainians. I remember about ten years ago a man in his 60s coming to me to complain about his gold-digger Ukrainian ex-wife, a so-called ‘Russian bride’. The usual story: she was 30 years younger than him, had flattered his male vanity and then fleeced him (plumer in French, literally, to pluck the feathers off) for everything she could get her greedy, gold-digging hands on. As they say, no fool like an old fool. Of course, I could not help him. His reason for coming to me was that she had told him she was an Orthodox Christian. Of course, she was not at all, neither Orthodox, nor a Christian. I had never seen her in my life. This is a story among thousands of others. She was not a typical Ukrainian, but she was a typical ‘khokhol’.

The Sense of Entitlement

Since last March Europe has been flooded by Ukrainian ‘refugees’. And they keep coming, nearly four million of them now, and rising daily. Of course, very, very few of them are actually refugees. Until this October very, very few Ukrainians had been affected by the war which their government (a majority of them had voted for it) began in the Donbass in 2014. Those who were refugees had mainly fled to Russia – in their millions since 2014. There they were made welcome. (I have one such woman in my parish, who got married here last year). In Europe they were told that there was no war in the Donbass and they were illegal immigrants (I have such a family in my parish). The ‘refugees’ are mostly, typical for the lowest layer, ‘khokhly’, who take advantage of Western politicians and the racist naivety and anti-Russian prejudices of ignorant Western people. The khokhly are simply on an extended vacation, with a chance to travel in Western Europe, expenses paid – something they, visa-less, had been dreaming of for years back in the Ukraine.

Khokhly do not want to, or intend to, work, and are heartily despised by the real Ukrainians, who have been here for years, have learned the native language, and do work – very hard. I remember introducing one of the ‘refugees’ to longstanding Ukrainian parishioners. The conversation lasted two minutes. As my parishioner said to me afterwards: ‘As soon as he got out his latest model of Iphone, I walked away. I knew exactly what his game was’. He confirmed what I had thought. Fraudsters. Many of the ‘refugees’ do float around European towns and cities in their UA-registered expensive German cars, much better cars than those of their naïve Western hosts. The sense of entitlement is: ‘I am Ukrainian, you owe me everything’. ‘You are not a Ukrainian, you are a khokhol’, is my answer to them.

The khokhly take free food and clothes, elbowing the local poor people out of the way. They do not make themselves liked – at all. Some register themselves in several Western countries and receive benefit money from several countries. Meanwhile they have rented out their flats in the Ukraine to fellow-Ukrainians, often real refugees. Even more money coming in. Fraud is in their nature. In the Ukraine itself, the khokhly are now stealing gas which Russia sends to the desperately poor Moldovans. What else would you expect from khokhly? The same with Western arms, which (mainly Jewish) Ukrainian arms merchants are selling on the black market to all and sundry, including to Russians. A friend in Switzerland described their antics in church. You can recognise them easily, he said, as their children behave so badly. Why? Because they have never been to church in their lives. Their parents go to church, to meet others, to do business, to plan their next moneymaking moves and see if church people are stupid enough to give them something for free.

How naïve can Western people be? They are taking into their homes complete strangers who speak another language, have another culture and are often very picky with their food, and allowing them everything. It is political hypocrisy – real refugees are not allowed. Europe is awash with genuine refugees, Afghans and Syrians, victims of other NATO wars. But in what is open racism, they get nothing from Western countries, except life behind barbed wire in deportation camps because they are ‘brown’. But khokhly? They are allowed everything. However, after eight months, at least some Western Europeans have seen through them. Ordinary Polish people, and now already 1 in 25 people in not very prosperous and very hard-working Poland is a khokhol, are getting fed up with them. In France and England, many khokhly have been turned out onto the street by disillusioned sponsors. Their behaviour has been so appalling. Some are now turning up in the prison system.

Several million of them have already returned to the Ukraine. They pumped Western naivety for all it was worth and when they understood there was nothing more to take, they went back home, suitably enriched and with huge contempt for their former hosts. A Russian parishioner told me about her stupid acquaintance, a Russian called Marina who is married to a Frenchman. From the liberal chattering classes of Saint Petersburg, burdened by the guilt of political correctness, she had taken in a ‘poor Ukrainian woman’ (‘how they suffer because of that terrible Putin’). Marina came home early one day and found the naked young Ukrainian woman lying on the bed next to her equally naked French husband. It took her exactly ten minutes to turn the ‘poor Ukrainian woman’ out on to the street. As for her husband, he said he was ‘just having a rest and had no idea that a naked young woman was lying next to him’. As I understand it, this Marina believed him (2). Plus ca change….

Dekhokhlification

The fact is that most of the best Ukrainians, the real and honourable Ukrainians, have stayed in the Ukraine. Of all the ‘refugees’ I have met so far (and that must be over 100), I have not yet met one who is authentic. Whether by unintended consequence or by design, the Russian Federation is very successfully ‘dekhohklifying’ the Ukraine. Russia is successfully emptying the Ukraine of the lowest and most unprincipled layer of parasites, the khokhly. The population of the Ukraine is already down to fewer than 30 million – so far. More are leaving every day, streaming into Poland The khokhly go westwards. Let Western Europe take them, the rubbish. The good ones will stay. A few months ago I still thought that Russia would just free the Donbass, as it announced last February and also take the land-bridge of Zaporozhie and Kherson to protect the Crimea from the Nazis, who were turning off the water supply from there. Then I realised that Russia would have to go further, simply because the West was supplying the Kiev regime with shells and missiles that were falling not just on the liberated areas, but even in southern Russia.

Today it seems to me that Russia will have to liberate the whole of the Ukraine, even as far as Lvov and the border with Poland. Why not, if the trouble-making khokhly have gone and are bankrupting Western social security systems with their parasitic sponging? Why should the treacherous Poles get anything out of this? The Poles rejoiced when the UK blew up Nordstream and then tried to start World War III, blaming a murderous Ukrainian missile on Russians. Let them pay for the consequences. If the Nazis are either all dead or living in the EU, there is no reason for Russia to stop in the Donbass, or Kiev, or even Lvov. Liberate right up to the Polish border, freeing freezing Non-NATO Moldova on the way and stopping only there, at the Romanian border. Maybe let the Romanians have back North Bukovina (Chernivtsy) and the nice Hungarians have (the to-be-renamed) Zakarpattia. As for the rest: Winner takes all. Russia may now take all of the Ukraine because all the Nazi khokhly will have left for stupid Western Europe. It will have a nice straight border then. It is not a question of how many Ukrainian ‘refugees’ will go back. It is a question of how many of them Russia will allow back. The answer is very few.

Conclusion

On 24 November President Lukashenko stated that the Ukraine is now threatened with total annihilation: https://news.mail.ru/politics/54019554/?frommail=1. That is the result of forbidding your people human rights for eight years, massacring them, and refusing to love your Russian neighbour. As Russia bombards the Ukrainian electricity infrastructure, east, centre and west, from Kharkov to Odessa, from Kiev to Lvov, affecting heating, light and water supply, the stream of khokhly heading for the EU will increase pressure on the West to make the Kiev regime return to the negotiating table, from which the selfsame West forced the selfsame Kiev regime to leave last March. And if Zelensky refuses, he may well find himself eating polonium or novichok. MI6 are experts at that. Meanwhile, Finland is intending to build a wall between itself and Russia. We hope that Poland and others will do the same. This will save Russia the expense of doing it. The old Berlin Wall and watchtowers and mines along the East German border were to prevent people going westwards. The new one will be about preventing depraved LGBT Westerners going eastwards.

25 November 2022

Notes:

1. Some 20 years ago, a poll ‘discovered’ that 30% of ‘readers’ of the notorious British tabloid ‘The Sun’ are illiterate. As the Americans say: Go figure.

2. This is a case I know of personally. Other such equally absurd cases have been reported in the European media. One senses that the Establishment-inspired adoration of Ukrainians is fast fading in Western Europe. Reality is dawning, even among tabloid readers.

More

• Why it doesn’t matter whose rocket hit Poland [English captions]

From the Surreal to the Real to the Meta-Real

October 31, 2022

By Batiushka

The Surreal

For one brief moment we thought that Monty Python had made a comeback, starring Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Surreal because of both characters, the former who returned post-haste from the Caribbean dreaming of a victorious return, the latter who appears to have been responsible for the terrorist attacks on the Nordstream pipelines (so said Truss’ mobile phone) and the Crimea-Kerch Bridge. No surprises here, as she represents the same ruthless British Establishment, which carried out the Litvinenko murder (carried out under ‘white man speak with forked tongue Bliar’) and the bungled Skripal murders (carried out under the son of millionaire slave-traders Cameron), making a clumsy mess of trying to frame Russia for them. Only zombies would believe that Russia was responsible for either mishap. Russia may not be populated with geniuses, but, unlike MI6, it is not populated with morons either.

Then we learned that the latest episode of the Great British Comedy Show was over – though only until the next one – with the utterly incompetent Truss backstabbed and sacked by her own. But the surreal was not over: A multimillionaire Hindu took over the UK Premiership and he has already hinted at cancelling Truss’ intention to increase the ‘defence’ budget of the bankrupt UK by 50% by 2030. This same Hindu banker is now responsible for appointing all bishops of the State-run ‘Church of England’! Yes, it is Monty Python again. The most important thing, however, is that Truss’ crazed fingers have been taken away from the nuclear button. Perhaps her American masters ordered it.

As for ‘Richy’ Sunak, his PR people are presenting him as another nice brown Obama (1). (Remember – the one who refused to close down Guantanamo Bay and murdered people by drone, for which the CIA kindly funded and then awarded him one of their Nobel Peace Prizes?). But already, on Sunak’s watch, the not-so-secret UK secret services have co-ordinated a pathetic drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Of course, just as James Bond was the one who simply did the US’s dirty jobs for them, it was all okayed in Washington first. Hopefully, friends in India might tell Sunak to start behaving like a morally upright Indian, not like a British moral pygmy. Hopefully.

However, the surreal continued when, on 23 October, with the Russian Defence Minister’s phone calls to his US, UK, French and Turkish counterparts about the Russian discovery of a Kiev/MI6 plot to use a ‘dirty’ bomb and blame it on Russia. Having outed the plot, Sergei Shoigu had alerted the US Establishment to the extremism of the now desperate Kiev elite (and their British MI6 operatives). The US put the Kiev crazies in their place, since, after all, the US are the string-pullers and puppets are not allowed to do anything without their express permission. The US duly stated that it has seen no evidence that Russia intends to use nuclear weaponry and President Putin stated that Russia has no plans to use nuclear weapons. The panic and hysteria of the Western media and of others was unfounded; though the mass media did not report the US admission. Panic and hysteria sell.

The third cause of surreal panic was the news that units from a US Airborne Division had been deployed to Romania. In fact, it was only a partial deployment, a rotation prepared months before, not a US threat to take over Odessa using parachute troops. The concept that the US wants to see its own troops being slaughtered in the Ukraine is also surreal. Even they do not want to trigger World War III against a nuclear power for the sake of Monsanto, Cargill and Hunter Biden. Forget it, Gonzalo, the US are cowards. They are not going to die for a piece of Eastern Europe. That is what they pay the Kiev cannon fodder and mercenaries for. To die on their behalf, ‘for a fistful of dollars’.

The Real

Let us now come back to reality. The 87,5% of the world which either supports the Russian campaign to liberate the Ukraine, or else remains neutral towards it, shows the increasing isolation of the Nazi West. And it is now also crystal clear that ‘the West’ is in fact only the USA, just as NATO is only the USA, the Wicked Witch of the West. The rest is just camouflage, a mirage. In Italy, Germany, France, Moldova, the Czech Lands, Romania (the former Defence Minister), Bulgaria, Serbia, even in the UK, dissident voices are protesting. For God’s sake, negotiate with Russia! The Ukraine is their business, not ours, they’re all basically Russkies anyhow. We want gas and food! Who cares about the Nazi puppets in Kiev? More and more all European governments, apart only from the Hungarian, are being seen as what they are – simply US puppet elites, who do not represent their peoples. EU or Non-EU Europe, there is no difference, apart from Hungary, which alone has, in every sense, a popular government. If Nobel Prizes were given non-politically, surely Victor Orban should have won one of them by now.

Here the hypochondriac French are going crazy because China is sanctioning them by depriving them of paracetamol. Perhaps as many as 20% of Western Europeans have now realised that the whole Ukraine affair is a put-up job, arranged by the US, with its British poodle yapping at its feet. Same as Iraq, same as Afghanistan. Same old, same old. The poodle is more papist than the Pope. Over the last two months it is notable that most Ukrainian flags have been taken down in Europe. It is rare to see one now. The working class were never interested, they always knew it was just another operation by the arms industry, but now even the conformist middle-class is taking down its Ukrainian flags. The mirage is over. This Hell-begotten war must end.

More in Europe are beginning to think that maybe President Putin is right. We do indeed need a common economic home, from Reykjavik/Dublin/Lisbon to Vladivostok. This would not be US-led like the EU. The EU is just the political and economic arm of the US in Europe, just as NATO is its military arm. The USE (United States of Europe) has been USED. It is over. All we need now is for Europe to recover its independence from the US invasion and occupation of the 1940s. Then there will be a new EU, Eurasian Union, or EC, Eurasian Confederation. This would be governed not by unelected Eurocrats, but by the elected governments of the sovereign countries of multipolar Eurasia co-operating together.

The terrorist attack on the Kerch/Crimea Bridge prompted Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, putting at least 40% of it out of action and some of it for a very long time. Those strikes are taking place every day. Today 80% of Kiev is without water. A lot of people have no light and no heat and outside at night it is -2. Wait till it is -2 during the day. Don’t poke the bear, Zelensky.

On 20 October we had an indication of what was going to happen once Russia’s partial mobilization of 300,000 was complete – as it is now. In Kherson, near which large Ukrainian forces appear to be massed, the governor Kirill Stremousov declared that: ‘After defeating the planned Kiev regime attacks on Kherson we plan to launch a counter-offensive towards Nikolaev, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk’.

https://news.mail.ru/incident/53550333/?frommail=1

And on 30 October, the same man stated that they were expecting the mass Kiev attack on Kherson by 40,000-60,000 troops, a third of whom are mercenaries. It is said that mercenary pay is $4,000 dollars a week. But what use is that when you are dead?

https://news.mail.ru/politics/53680125/?frommail=1

Many minor attacks by Kiev troops towards Kherson have been defeated in October. Kiev’s offensive capability is constantly being degraded by attrition. Some say that since February 60,000 Kiev troops have died. Others put the dreadful figure at 400,000, but that may well mean 400,000 dead, seriously wounded or captured. Some say that 1,000 Kiev troops are being put out of action every day. Now 82,000 Russian reservists have already been deployed in the Donbass in order to liberate the frontline troops.

If I were a Western leader, I would be thinking: How can I get out of this mess without losing face? Perhaps I could say: ‘Russia has not dared move against any NATO country. NATO has stood firm against Russian aggression. This is another great victory for us’. Having run away and presented the Western Dunkirk in the Ukraine as a victory, next I would sit down and quietly remove all the sanctions. After all, almost exactly sixty years ago, the crushed US removed all its missiles from the Soviet-Turkish border in order to get the USSR to remove all its missiles from off the coast of Cuba ago and everyone knows that was also a great US victory. There is only one way to deal with bullies: Stand up to them. And then you will see that all bullies are cowards and they can run very fast, as from Afghanistan.

The Meta-Real

According to words attributed to President Putin:

‘Before God I have vowed that I will do all I can for the salvation of Russia. It turns out that the world has to be saved, because the demons who have seized control of the West are trying to destroy everything spiritual on the planet. I believe that I will succeed because I have the power and support of the Lord and that is all I need’.

There are very many and very unanimous Orthodox Christian prophecies, like those of the very well-known and quite recent St Laurence of Chernigov, St Kuksha of Odessa, Elder Zosima of Donetsk, Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) and also Elder Jonah (Ignatenko) of Odessa (+ 2012). The latter, who said that Odessa will be liberated last, said: ‘After President Putin there will come a Tsar and there will be peace for a time’.

Listening yet again to Vladimir Putin’s planet-changing talk in Valdai, I am ready to believe it. Listen carefully. He is a genius. President Putin showed tolerance to all, whereas so many of the careerists who figure in the elite of the Russian Orthodox Church, ignoring the clergy and people, show pharisaical intolerance. Sadly, the upper echelons of the Russian Orthodox Church are still stuffed with those corrupted by the corrupt Western money of 1990s Russia. As the Russian proverb says: ‘A fish rots from the head’. But I am quite confident about the body of the fish. And by the way, the same prophets say that the new Tsar will then cleanse the Church of its corrupt and unprincipled careerist-bishops. It is time.

November is the month when it gets cold, the mud freezes, so tanks and transports can move forward and the leaves disappear from the trees, meaning there is no cover for Nazis. As for Western Europe, after an incredibly warm October, with hardly any need for heating, November will definitely bring cold weather. Something is afoot. The great battle?

Tomorrow is November.

31 October 2022

Note:

1. Remember the so subtle Berlusconi’s so subtle remark on first seeing Obama: ‘Nice sun-tan you have there’.

Related Videos

NATO Set To Attack Tiraspol?

October 27, 2022

By David Sant

Gonzalo Lira recently posted two soliloquies which were both accusatory and predictive about NATO’s apparent motivations and likely near-term kinetic military objectives. He concluded that after detonating a “dirty bomb” on Ukrainian territory, the USA and NATO would use the opportunity as an excuse to move the 101st Airborne Division from Romania into Odessa.

and

both may be sped up 1.5x-1.73x

While I think his big picture thinking is generally correct, I disagree with Mr. Lira on the mission of the 101st Airborne Division in the scenario he described.

Many years ago I was an officer in the National Guard sister Brigade to the 101st. Both Brigades are “air assault light infantry,” which was developed in the Vietnam War with the 7th Air Cavalry Division. “We Were Soldiers Once and Young,” tells that story.

Though the 101st is called “airborne” in reference to its World War II days, today its soldiers are not trained to jump out of airplanes; the 82nd Airborne Division does that.

The 101st deploys using UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. Each division in the brigade has an aviation battalion with three companies of Blackhawk helicopters. Their primary combat mission is to secure a bridgehead.

When deploying, an air assault infantry battalion goes to a designated pickup zone, and a company of Blackhawks comes in to ferry them to the landing zone. Although they are trained to rappel out of the helicopters in a hot Landing Zone, in practice the helicopters usually land, and the troops jump out. It is much faster and safer. Two minutes later the chopper is back in the air and goes back for another squad at the pickup zone. Thus it might take the better part of an hour with two or three round trips to move an entire infantry battalion from the PZ to the LZ, longer if the distance is longer.

While an air assault infantry brigade can move 105 mm light artillery pieces via helicopter, the main supply and logistics assets of the brigade must follow the main force on the ground in trucks. Therefore, unlike the 82nd Airborne Division, or the Rangers, both of which are designed to jump into areas far behind enemy lines, an air assault brigade like the 101st is limited in how far it can leapfrog ahead of its support assets.

If NATO desires to fortify Odessa against the Russian advance, or use Odessa as a base to engage Russian forces near Nikolaev, they have a serious logistical problem. Supply lines from Poland on main Ukrainian highways or railroads must travel 700 kilometers to reach Odessa.

Figure 1: These routes are vulnerable to Russian air power and cruise missiles which have hit targets as far West as Lviv.

The shortest supply lines to Odessa for NATO would be from Romania, which has two segments of border with Ukraine. However, the best paved route would be through Moldova, which is not a member of NATO. Romania has state of the art NATO air defense batteries which can cover most of the route to Odesssa. Therefore, assuming they are effective against Russian cruise missiles, which may be a bad assumption, it would be safer to supply forces in Odessa from Romania than from Poland.

Figure 2 shows two possible approaches to Odessa from Romanian territory.

The NATO base in Cincu ( 45°54’49.15″N 24°48’21.25″E ), Romania is about 450 km from Odessa, which is too far for Blackhawks to make a round trip without mid-air refueling or using a FARP. It is more likely that an Assembly Area would be used near the Romanian city of Huşi.

The 101st cannot advance quickly to Odessa from the south, because there are practically no roads, and then Dniester Bay has to be crossed to get to Odessa. There is only one bridge over that bay, which is right on the coast, within range of Russian missiles, and far from the air defense umbrella in Romania. While possibly an avenue of attack, it would be almost impossible to defend that bridge from Russian cruise missiles.

Transnistria, with its Russian base at Tiraspol, is located directly in-between Romania and Odessa. This presents a problem for any NATO intentions for Odessa.

Transnistria, as an unrecognized breakaway province of Moldova, has been defended by Russia since 1994 or so, and would be seen as fair game by NATO, which doesn’t seem to worry about the rules, anyway.

Just like Azerbaijan and Turkey taking Nagorno Karabakh, if NATO can grab Tiraspol nobody other than Russia is going to squawk about it.

A key military objective for NATO / 101^st Airborne is likely to be Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, which because of its geography, is the most difficult region for Russia to defend. Sandwiched between Ukraine and NATO, Russia has no supply lines to it. And more importantly, the two best bridges over the Dneister on the best-paved route to Odessa from Romania are located at Tiraspol.

In the Kharkiv region, Russian forces fell back rather than get encircled. But as Tiraspol lies within the merest sliver of land between the Ukraine and Moldova, there is no room for strategic withdrawal or even much maneuver. It is highly relevant to find out how strong the Russian ground and air defenses are around Tiraspol. However, I do not have access to good information about that.

The much-vaunted Kherson offensive may yet prove to be a feint, and the Ukrainian Army’s real attack might well come against Tiraspol from Ukrainian territory, with the 101^st Airborne soldiers attacking from across Moldova. Although Moldova is not a member of NATO, I have a feeling that the USA could twist arms hard enough to get permission to overfly Moldovan airspace, especially with the promise of returning Tiraspol to Moldovan control.

Plucking Tiraspol out of Russia’s hands would make Biden look strong just before the midterm election, even though so far he never has been strong. This could be hoped to be a repeat of Joe Biden’s apocryphal poolside triumph over the bully named “CornPop.”

Therefore, if NATO takes action toward Odessa, the 101st’s primary objectives will certainly be the three bridges over the Dniester. Taking these bridgeheads would allow a larger NATO force to cross over and prepare to defend Odessa.

Main Bridge Pair: 46°49’57″N 29°29’26″E

Secondary Bridge: 46°55’11″N 29°28’20″E

Third Bridge: 46° 4’34.55″N 30°28’11.28″E

Without at least one of those three bridges, NATO cannot hold or resupply Odessa. The mission of the 101st would actually be to take Tiraspol and neutralize the air defenses first. Then a follow-on force can roll into Odessa with Ukrainian support.

Figure 3: shows a hypothetical joint assault by the 101st and Ukrainian forces on Tiraspol. However, it does not show the Russian defending forces, as we don’t know where or how strong they are.

In order to take Tiraspol, the bridges over the Dniester River must be secured. U.S. Army air assault infantry is ideal for such a mission. However, the 101^st will nevertheless have to survive while coming under fire from Russian S-300 and S-400 air defenses. ​Crimea is the main Russian Anti-Air platform in the region with the S-400, and its batteries can reach about 200 to 300 km West of Odessa.   (Albeit Tiraspol would be at the gray edge of their range.)

Figure 4: shows roughly the air defense ranges of batteries in Crimea and Tiraspol.

A single Russian S-400 battery in Crimea has about 380 missiles ready to launch. These missiles consist of five or six different kinds, having varying ranges, and various types of targets they are designed to hit.

The 40N6E missile in particular is designed to hit low-flying targets over the radar horizon at ranges up to 450 kilometers. These are ideal helicopter killers: The missile flies up to a high altitude, and then—about halfway to its target—turns on its own radar and looks down to find low-flying aircraft. Recently one scored a record 250 km kill in the Ukraine.

​The Russian surface fleet also has S-300 and S-400 air defenses. However, the Moskva was the primary S-400 Anti-Aircraft platform in the Black Sea.  The Americans helped the Ukrainians to sink it, so, it is gone.  While, it is true that Russia cannot get any additional capital ships into the Black Sea, it has already moved several smaller missile ships from the Caspian through the Volga-Don canal system to Rostov-On-Don. I do not know if any of those smaller vessels have AA capability similar to the Moskva.

Despite such a long-range Russian AA threat to the 101st transport helicopters, it might still be possible for Tiraspol to be taken, especially if the US Fleet in the Adriatic were to launch a barrage of cruise missiles against Crimea.  That would temporarily take up the full attention of the S-400 batteries, while allowing the 101st to fly to its landing zone in its UH60 Blackhawks.

​But such a ploy would probably come at the cost of the NATO carrier group. If the US Navy fires on Crimea or the Russian Navy, it seems quite certain that the Russian Navy will sink the entire carrier group.

The Russians could have long ago escalated this war and sunk the NATO naval assets in the Mediterranean with a first strike.  There is a reason that they have not escalated so far: The Kremlin realizes that time is on Russia’s side.

The Western Central Banking System is on the verge of a full melt-down.  Russia, China, and Iran have made great progress toward ending the U.S. petrodollar hegemony for energy sales (and for much else). Even in the Ukraine, the slow grind is working in Russia’s favor, despite all the news headlines to the contrary.

The longer Russia waits to escalate, the sooner the U.S., UK, and EU hang themselves with their own rope.  It looks like the West has about six months left, tops. We are running out of diesel fuel, oil, gasoline, natural gas, fertilizer—and soon enough—food.

However, if that calculation were to change, Russia could very quickly escalate and deal a quick defeat to the entire NATO naval and air forces via its hypersonic missiles and S-400, S-500, and S-550 air defenses.  Russia could permanently blind NATO’s GPS and spy satellites in 30 minutes.

Why hasn’t Russia simply ended this like it could?  Because, the U.S. would be likely to retaliate with nuclear weapons.  Even though the Russian S-500 and S-550 provide a missile shield to their main cities, they do not want to risk being on the receiving end of a nuclear strike.  So the Kremlin is willing to eat relatively small losses in Ukraine and the Black Sea, because it knows victory is already won.  Russia is not willing to trade this for a Pyrrhic Victory.  Therefore, patience continues to dominate Russia’s actions.

NATO, on the other hand, seems to have misinterpreted patience for weakness. If the geniuses of “NATO” send in the 101^st Airborne Division and a Mechanized Infantry Brigade to Odessa, they will learn the hard way that the propaganda about Russian losses in Ukraine was wrong.  But I hope they don’t do it.  Both Odessa and Tiraspol are ancient and beautiful cities. It would be a terrible tragedy to see them leveled like Mariupol was.

In the final analysis, the only way that the U.S. could pull this whole thing off would be if it can degrade the Russian air defense capabilities for long enough to fly their entire air assault brigade into the landing zones, which is to say, about 12 hours. However, the Russians are “waiting for it,” so, I wouldn’t bet on the U.S.

Crimea is unsinkable. The US Carrier group in the Adriatic is hypersonic missile bait.  Tiraspol is a historical Russian city like Odessa. Russia would hate to lose it, but it is the least defensible of all their properties at the moment.

While it would be a big gamble by NATO, Tiraspol is the low-hanging fruit that the U.S., the 101^st Airborne Division, NATO, and the Ukraine will probably attempt to seize. I think that will be their first objective if they choose to escalate with a dirty bomb.

About Partial Mobilization (Andrei Martyanov)

SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

The Coming Victory of Native Europeans in the UK and the EU

September 07, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Introduction: A Spectre Is Haunting Europe

A spectre is haunting Europe – it is the spectre of poverty. The bets are now on as to which European country will collapse first. Among the front runners you will find Portugal, Latvia, Ireland, Romania, Italy, Moldova, Spain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Bulgaria, France and Slovakia. But perhaps none of them is more likely to fall first than the UK. For it has a new Prime Minister, who, unthinkably, is an even greater clown than the last one and even threatens to press the nuclear button. Let me digress for a moment with a visit to the islands off the coast of North-Western Europe.

MissTrust Rules

My visit to the UK, after Wiesbaden in Germany, came at a time when the English peasants were revolting, but the governing elite did not yet know it.

In one last Marie-Antoinette farewell moment the unlate, unlamented Mr Johnson advised the revolting peasants of the UK to spend £20 buying a new and more economic kettle, so that after two years (if the Chinese-made kettle lasted that long) they could save £10 a year on their £2,500 + annual energy bills. ‘Let them eat cake’, he may as well have shouted to the breadless masses.

The effete and wealthy Tory Party never understood the people. Johnson’s unelected replacement, MissTrust, for whom we should beg the CIA (which has long funded Nobel Prizes) to fund a Nobel Prize for Geography (after all Mr Obama won a Nobel Prize for Peace), faces many challenges:

Firstly, there is the self-inflicted mess Mr Johnson made of Brexit, notably by separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain as regards imports and exports and failing to impose any laws for necessary immigration and against unnecessary immigration. It was the Tory Party that imposed on the British people the then Common Market (later becoming the EU) in 1973. The people never asked to join – they were never consulted.

Secondly, there is the self-inflicted covid chaos. Tory-imposed lockdowns bankrupted many and were hated by even more. The much-vaunted vaccines turned out to be useless after three months, and even extremely harmful to some. Today a million vaccinated Britons have covid week in, week out. The people never asked for lockdowns and false vaccines – they were never consulted.

Thirdly, there is the self-inflicted energy crisis and the spiralling energy and food prices, caused by illegal Tory government sanctions against the Russian decision to rescue Russians from Kiev’s genocide and persecution. The people never asked to be cold and hungry – they were never consulted.

Fourthly, there are the self-inflicted dramatic problems of always underfunded national infrastructure, whether that of the Health Service (people dying in their homes and in ambulances because the hospitals are so full that they have to wait for many, many hours before they can be admitted), the ‘privatised’ electricity, gas, water and telecom companies, airports and railways, which are all breaking down. The people never asked for public services which are appalling because they are private – they were never consulted.

Don’t worry. MissTrust has what she calls a ‘bold solution’. It is called another £150 billion of extra debt. But perhaps, after this digression to the islands, Continental Europe can provide a remedy for such idiocy through a long-ago victory over the Franco-German elite?

Inspiration for Freedom: Roncevaux III

The peoples of UK Europe will have to fight for their freedom. And so will the peoples of EU Europe. They might all find their inspiration in the long, long ago Native European defeat of the Franco-German elite, whose descendants now rule in Brussels. I speak of the victory of the Native Europeans – the original inhabitants of Europe long before the Greeks, Romans, Celts and Teutons – the Basques. Surviving as a group of some three million on the French-Spanish border, centred on the wild western Pyrenean mountains, they speak a unique, pre-Indo-European language, the original language of Europe. You have heard of Native Americans? Well, the Basques are Native Europeans. The rest are invaders. You have heard of General Custer? Well, you need to hear about his ancestor, General Roland. Sadly, the barbarian knight Custer was not defeated, but the barbarian knight Roland was.

With the rise of Charlemagne (747-814), the French name for the ‘Holy Roman Emperor’, ‘Karl der Grosse’, ‘Karl the Tall’, Frankish imperialism tried to invade and control ever more territory in Western and Central Europe in a feeble attempt to imitate the pagan Roman Empire. The attempt by these barbarians failed, but it was the forerunner of all future pagan Western Empires, haunted and formated by pagan Rome, from the Portuguese to the Spanish, from the Dutch to the French, from the British (Roman Britannia) to the American via the Fascist Italian and the Nazi German. (Why do you think the Washington White House has the form of a Roman temple and they talk of the myth of ‘Pax Americana’?)

In the 770s the future unHoly, unRoman and unEmperor, Charlemagne had his barbarian army encroach into the Duchy of Aquitaine in what is now south-west France. The Basques (Vascones or Gascons) in the territory south of the River Garonne, northern Gascony, remained largely free. However, from 778 on Charlemagne expanded the Frankish takeover of Aquitaine to present-day Gascony (the northern Basque Country), appointing Franks, Burgundians and Frankish ‘Church’ officials to the main posts.

Seeing an opportunity to expand by allying himself with Muslim dissidents, headed among others by the Arab traitor Husayn of Zaragoza (so much for Charlemagne’s much-vaunted ‘Christianity’), in 778 Charlemagne marched across the Pyrenees ‘at the head of all the forces he could muster’ to Spain. The Muslims under Abd ar-Rahman of Cordoba sent their best general to stop the Frankish invasion. However, the traitor Husayn managed to defeat and imprison him.

Then Husayn decided not to yield his new privileged status to the Franks and refused to surrender the city of Zaragoza to Charlemagne, claiming he had never promised him anything. Husayn tried to bribe Charlemagne by giving him the imprisoned general from Cordoba and a large tribute of gold, but Charlemagne was not satisfied. He laid siege to Zaragoza, but eventually he accepted the gold and the release of several prisoners from Husayn, in return for which he lifted his siege.

Before running away from Spain (Kabul), Charlemagne decided to terrorise the Basque country. Intending to eliminate opposition from the native Basques, he gave orders to destroy the walls of the Basque capital Pamplona (Mariupol) or even, according to some, destroy the city altogether, and he also razed many Basque towns. He placed forts and military outposts (Remember Custer) throughout their territory and his invading Franks treated the Basques harshly during his occupation (Remember the Native Americans).

After imagining that he had conquered the region (the Ukraine), Charlemagne (Obama) marched for the Pyrenees mountain pass of Roncevaux in order to return to France (Poland). Many of his lords, such as Roland, Anselm and Eggihard, were placed in the rearguard to protect the retreat and the baggage train. The Basques sent their soldiers after him in retaliation for the destruction of their towns and the Basques’ local knowledge helped them overtake the Franks.

On the evening of 15 August 778 Charlemagne’s rearguard was set upon by the Basques as they crossed the mountain pass. The Franks were caught unawares as they tried to escape. The Basques (Afghans) managed to cut off the Frankish rearguard and the baggage train from the rest of the retreating Army. As Charlemagne tried to rescue his Army, Roland and the others held out until the Basques finally massacred them, killing them to the last man. The Basques then plundered the baggage left behind and took advantage of the night to disappear, so that the Franks could not find them the next morning.

The Battle caused great losses among the Frankish (Ukrainian) troops, including several of the most important aristocrats (officers) and the sack of the baggage (military equipment), probably with all the gold given by the Muslims in Zaragoza. Charlemagne (NATO) lost huge quantities of treasure and men (mercenaries). Never again would Charlemagne take it upon himself to lead an army to battle in Spain (the Ukraine), having to rely instead on his generals (CIA/MI6) for future campaigns. The Franks had failed to capture Zaragoza and suffered a great defeat at the hands of the Basques (DNR/LNR).

Later, lands in the Pyrenees would be ruled by Charlemagne’s officials, and distributed among colonisers (Hunter Biden/Monsanto) and to the Frankish Church (Woke fanatics) allied to Charlemagne (Biden). However, the Basques would finally consolidate their independent Kingdom of Pamplona in 824 after new resistance to Frankish rule. In that year the Basque Army defeated another Frankish Army in the same mountain pass. The Second Battle of Roncevaux was almost identical to the first, with the Basques again taking advantage of the terrain, but against a much larger Frankish force. Unlike the first Battle in which most of Charlemagne’s Army managed to escape, the invaders, led by the Frankish vassal Aeblus, were trapped and routed, and a larger number of their men were slaughtered than in 778.

Thus, the Battle of Roncevaux (literally, ‘Brambly Valley’) in the Pyrenees in 778 saw the Basque freedom-fighters defeat Charlemagne after his invasion. The Basques celebrate this victory to this day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmr3apxS87E). However, the death of Roland and his warriors gave the Western elite role models for their barbarous knights of the Western Middle Ages.  Over the years the Battle was hyped into a struggle between Catholics and Muslims, although the Basques of the period were mainly pagan and the Franks were allied to some of the Muslims.

The Native European victory at Roncevaux is retold with regret in the eleventh-century work of Frankish propaganda, ’The Song of Roland’. It is recalled in the Italian Orlando (= Roland) Furioso and inspired Western Establishment composers like Lully, Vivaldi and Handel. The Western elitists, who today fly Ukrainian flags from their Establishment buildings, government offices, town-halls, castles and Catholic and Protestant churches in Western Europe and name their children ‘Roland’ and ‘Orlando’, will tell you that ‘Roland’ is a Western hero, a Zelensky from the past.

Conclusion: Europequake

Western and Central Europe faces a turning-point. Its Native Peoples face defeat or victory. The first great Basque/Native European victory over the invading elite took place in 778, the second in 824. The 1200th anniversary of Roncevaux II is approaching fast. May the anniversary of this great victory of Native Europeans be inspirational to the peoples of Europe today. The Native Europeans defeated the Frankish elite then; so we can again today. The 1200th anniversary of Roncevaux II is coming in 2024. Let us make that Roncevaux III.

7 September 2022

Unicorns Are Real

September 02, 2022

Source

by Batiushka

Unicorns Are Real or It Must Be True, the Western Media Told Me So

An autumn chill is descending on every European country, though in each country in different ways.

Gas-dependent Germany and Italy are desperate for Russian gas. It is not just homes, but whole factories which face imminent closure in energy-intensive industries. The result of that will be mass unemployment. By ‘mass’, I mean 20% and more.

In France there is popular rejection of President Macron who has told his people that they (i.e. not him) must suffer so that the Ukraine can ‘win’. September is the first month of the annual strike-season in France. French people do not like being cold. Expect some headlines.

In Latvia the Russian minority are fearful for their future, but so is everyone else. Heating will not be an option this winter. With a pension of just over 100 euros a month, many pensioners are simply going to die of the cold.

From Slovakia we have received the following:

‘Thanks for your email. Just to give you some idea of the current manufacturing costs here in Slovakia and to be brutally honest throughout the upside down world, We paid last year 85,000 euros for electricity, this year it’s going to be around 500,000 euros. As of 1 Jan2023 it’s going to be 1.2 million euros at best.

So that’s just the electricity, never mind the gas, the increase in raw materials, salaries and all other manufacturing costs, This is a hard way of saying it’s impossible to reduce and every customer of ours has to accept it or not. Surprisingly we have never ever been as busy! You cutting margins down low is of course difficult, but at least you have margins. We simply do not have anything to reduce’.

In Moldova the crisis is profound. As in Latvia and Lithuania up to half the population have fled their countries after they were pillaged by the EU (even though officially Moldova does not even belong to the EU!). Previously medicine came from the Ukraine. Now that is unobtainable, they have to use medicine from Germany. Only that costs ten times more. Quite simply, if you are very ill and you don’t have the money, this year you will die.

In Romania, which has lost a quarter of its population to emigration after the great EU pillage, and where a salary of 600 euros per month is considered very good, food prices are the same as in Western Europe, where average salaries are four to five times more, and diesel costs even more than elsewhere.

In Ireland restaurants are closing because they cannot afford their energy bills, which have increased by 1,000% (yes, one thousand per cent).

In London, the capital of the Brutish (sic) Empire, the Gauleiter Johnson finally admitted that, ‘British households will have to endure soaring energy bills as part of efforts to defeat Vladimir Putin….economic sanctions imposed on Russia have contributed to soaring global gas prices which have driven up household bills’. Analysts expect the UK’s energy price cap per household to rise from an already extremely high £1,971 today to £3,554 a year this October and to a completely unaffordable £6,089 in April 2023. A bill boycott is gathering momentum. Expect rioting and the looting of supermarkets by the hungry.

Did British people choose to endure this? No. Did British people plead to suffer so that they can defeat Putin in a local quarrel about a country most of them had never heard of until last February? No. Did British people refuse to pay for the abundant and cheap Russian oil and gas in roubles? No. Were they consulted about choosing the new Prime Minister? No. So much for ‘the mother of parliaments’….

In the oligarch-controlled UK there are now calls for Thatcher’s privatised utility companies, with their huge profits, generous payouts of dividends to shareholders, hopeless infrastructure, lack of investment and absence of government regulation, to be renationalised. Some have even commented that perhaps ‘the free market’ really meant the law of the jungle and that ‘privatisation simply meant Thatcher selling off public assets to her capitalist cronies and supporters’. Well, forty years late, but some people have finally got the message.

Enough. That is not what I wanted to tell you about.

In the last week of August I left France and went to Wiesbaden. There I visited the magnificent Russian church, built in the century before last. Going round the cemetery with the graves of old aristocrats with their masonic symbols on their headstones (now you know why the Russian Revolution took place), I saw the relatively new grave that I had been looking for.

This was the grave of a lovely old couple, whom I had long known. I won’t reveal their names, just to say that their story would make a film, only so romantic that you would not believe it. However, if you are past the age of forty, you should have realised by now that real life is far, far stranger and far, far more incredible than any fiction. All I will say is that he was born in Saint Petersburg in 1916, was taken by his fleeing parents to Finland after the rest of the family had been shot, that in 1943 he had become a monk and a priest in Nazi Germany, and that in late 1946 the family had fled ruined Berlin for Peronist Argentina as Russian Orthodox refugees. And there, in 1948, he met a desperately poor Argentinian street girl who had been born in Italy. It was love at first sight. I don’t think I have ever met such a devoted and exemplary couple or ever will. They died in great old age within hours of each other.

Enough. That is not what I wanted to tell you about.

After I had gone down from the high wooded churchlands into the town of Wiesbaden, I saw a middle-aged woman wearing a T-shirt which said: ‘Unicorns are Real’. The words were not in German, but in English (even though, no doubt the T-shirt was Made in China). I began to wonder.

Was it just infantilism? The sort of escapism that funded the UFO industry, or Star Wars, or Harry Potter? The irresponsible and immature who are running away from reality?

And I thought to myself that I could not imagine any middle-aged Russian, Chinese, Indian, Iranian, African, Cuban, Colombian or Brazilian woman wearing such a T-shirt (unless of course they were so futile that they had married oligarchs). And then there came to me the words written by the British author G.K. Chesterton in his short story of 1925, The Oracle of the Dog: ‘The first effect of not believing…is that you lose your common sense’.

In other words, to wear such a T-shirt simply shows a lack of faith – in anything. And I thought how significant it was that the words had been written in English, the language of the Hegemon. And I thought, yes, this really is the end of the Western world. Because if you want to advertise your belief that unicorns are real, you have quite simply lost your mind and that from now on you will believe anything the Western world tells you. After all, it is only one step from ‘Unicorns are Real’ to:

‘The great and noble Zelensky is winning the war in the Ukraine because our Western cause is just’.

Will the Ukraine be partitioned next and, if so, how?

August 16, 2022

Interesting info today.  First, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has, through the statement of a Colonel General, made the following statement (translated by my friend Andrei Martyanov on his blog): (emphasis added)

Translation: MOSCOW, August 16 – RIA Novosti. Western curators have practically written off the Kyiv regime and are already planning the partition of Ukraine, Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman Colonel-General Volodymyr Matveev said at the Moscow Conference on International Security. “Obviously, the West is not concerned about the fate of the Kyiv regime. As can be seen from the information received by the SVR, Western curators have almost written it off and are in full swing developing plans for the division and occupation of at least part of the Ukrainian lands,” he said. However, according to the general, much more is at stake than Ukraine: for Washington and its allies, it is about the fate of the colonial system of world domination.

Just to clarify, the SVR rarely makes public statements and when they do, you can take them to the bank as the SVR is not in the business of “leaks” from “informed sources” and all the rest of the PR nonsense produced by the so-called western “intelligence” agencies (which have now been fully converted to highly politicized propaganda outlets).

The same day I see this article on the RT website: “Western countries waiting for ‘fall of Ukraine’ – Kiev” in which an interesting statement the Ukronazi Foreign Minister is mentioned:

Several countries in the West are waiting for Kiev to surrender and think their problems will immediately solve themselves, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba in an interview published on Tuesday.  “I often get asked in interviews and while speaking to other foreign ministers: how long will you last? That’s instead of asking what else could be done to help us defeat Putin in the shortest time possible,” Kuleba said, noting that such questions suggest that everyone “is waiting for us to fall and for their problems to disappear on their own.”

Finally, a while ago, Dmitri Medvedev post this “future map of the Ukraine after the war” on his Telegram account.  This maps shows a Ukraine partitioned between her neighbors and a tiny rump Ukraine left in the center.

Now, full disclosure, I have been a proponent of the breakup of the Ukraine into several successor states for a long while now: I gave my reasons for this in my article “The case for the breakup of the Ukraine” written in faraway 2016.

Now, six years later, what are the chances of this happening?

Without making predictions, which is close to impossible right now as there are way too many variables which can dramatically influence the outcome, I want to list a few arguments for and against the likelihood (as opposed to desirability) of such an outcome.

Arguments for the likelihood of this outcome:

• First, most of the neighbors of the Ukraine would benefit from such an outcome.  Poland would not get the “intermarium” it always dreams about, but it would get back lands which historically belong to Poland and are populated by many Poles.  In this map, Romania would also get a good deal, albeit Moldavia would lose Transnistria, which it had no real chance to ever truly control anyway.  Romania might, therefore, even absorb all of Moldavia.  True, on this map, Hungary gets (almost) nothing, but that is an issue which Hungary must tackle with Poland and Romania, not Russia.
• Russia might not even oppose such a development, simply because it makes the Ukronazi problem somebody else’s issue.  As long as what is the current Ukraine is fully demilitarized and denazified, Russia will be fine with such an outcome.
• The rump ex-Banderastan would be so much reduced in size, population and ressources that it would present little to no threat to anybody.  Crucially, the Russians will never allow it to have anything more than a minimal police and internal security force (for at least as long as there remains even *traces* of the Ukronazi Banderista ideology anywhere near Russia).  The actual chances of this rump Banderastan to become a threat to anybody would be close to zero.  Not to mention that even if that rump Banderastan could become some kind of threat, it would be much easier to deal with it than the threat Russia faced in early 2022.
• Objectively, the European countries would get the best possible “out” for them, as being in a constant state of total war by proxy is absolutely unsustainable for countries of Europe.
• As for “Biden”, assuming he is still alive and in power (?), it would make it possible for “him” to remove the topic of this latest war lost (again!) by the USA from the headlines and deal with other issues.
• The Ukraine has been such a waste of money, billions and billions, that it is essentially a black hole with an event horizon which lets nothing come back out and beyond which anything, money, equipment or men, simply disappear.  That is clearly an unsustainable drain on the economies of the West.
• Yet, in theory, if a deal is made and all parties agree, then the EU could remove maybe not all, but at least the worst, self-damaging, sanctions it so stupidly implemented and which are now destroying the EU’s economy.
• For the USA the biggest benefit from such an outcome could be, in theory, that it would “close” the “Russian front” and allow the US to focus its hatred and aggression against China.

There are, however, also many arguments against such an outcome.

• First, the western ruling classes, drunk on total russophobia, would have to accept that Russia won this war (again) and defeated the combined powers of the West (again).  This would mean an immense loss of face and political credibility for all those involved in the political war against Russia.
• Second, for NATO this would be a disaster.  Remember that NATO’s real goal is to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down“.  In this case, how would an even expanded NATO accept that it could do absolutely nothing to stop the Russians from achieving all their goals?
• Next, while the people of the EU are suffering from the devastating economic policies of their rulers, the ruling elites (the EU 1%) are doing just fine, thank you, and don’t give a damn about the people they rule over.
• Such an outcome would also directly challenge the US desire for a unipolar world, run by Uncle Shmuel as the World Hegemon.  The risk here is a political domino effect in which more and more countries would struggle to achieve true sovereignty, which would be a direct threat to the US economic model.
• Such an outcome is almost certain to be unachievable while the Neocons run the USA.  And since there are NO signs of the weakening of the Neocons’ iron grip on all the levers of political powers in the USA, such an outcome could only happen if the Neocon crazies are sent back to the basement they crawled out from and where they belong.  Not likely in the foreseeable future.
• This focus on the partition of the Ukraine overlooks the fact that the Ukraine is not the real enemy of Russia.  In fact, the Ukraine lost the war to Russia in the first 7-10 days after the beginning of the SMO.  Ever since, it is not the Ukraine per se which Russia has been fighting, but the consolidated West.  If the real enemy is the consolidated West, the it could be argued that *any* outcome limited to the Ukraine would not fix or solve anything.  At best, it might be an intermediate stage of a much larger and longer war in which Russia will have to demilitarize and denazify not just Banderastan but, at the very least, all of the EU/NATO countries.
• While for some the Ukrainian war has been an economic disaster, it has been a fantastic windfall for the (terminally corrupt) US MIC.  And I won’t even go into the obvious corruption ties the Biden family has in Kiev.  If this “Medvedev solution” is ever realized, then all that easy money would disappear.
• Furthermore, while amongst the argument for such an outcome I listed the ability of the USA to “close the Russian front” and focus on China, in reality such an arguments makes a very far-fetched assumption: that it is still possible to separate Russia and China and that Russia would allow the US to strike at China.  Simply put, Russia cannot allow China to be defeated any more than China can allow for a Russian defeat.  Thus the entire notion of “closing the Russian front” is illusory, in reality things have gone way too far for that and neither Russia nor China will allow the US to take them down one by one.
• The EU is run by a comprador ruling class which is totally subservient to the interests of the US Neocons.  There are, already, many internal tensions inside the EU and such an outcome would be a disaster for those all those EU politicians who painted themselves into the corner of a total war against Russia, and even if, say, the Poles, Romanians or even Hungarians get some benefit from such an outcome, it would be unacceptable to the thugs currently running Germany, the UK or even France.

The arguments for and against such an outcome I listed above are just some examples, in reality there are many more arguments on both sides of this issue.  Besides, what made sense 6 years ago might not make sense today.

For example, this discussion focuses on the “what” but not on the “how”.  Let me explain.

I think that I was the first person in the West who noticed and translated a key Russian expression: “non agreement capable” (недоговороспособны).  This expression has been increasingly used by many Russian decision-makers, politicians, political commentators and others.  Eventually, even the folks in the West picked up on this.  So let’s revisit this issue again, keeping in mind that the Russians are now fully convinced that the West is simply “non agreement capable”.  I would argue that up until the Russian ultimatum to the USA and NATO, the Russians still left open the door to some kind of negotiations.  However, and as I predicted BEFORE the Russian ultimatum, Russia made the only possibly conclusion from the West’s stance: if our “partners” (sarcasm) are not agreement capable, then the time has come for Russian unilateralism.

True, ever since 2013, or even 2008, there were already signs that Russian decision making is gradually moving towards unilateralism.  But the Russian ultimatum and SMO are now the “pure” signs of the adoption by Russia of unilateralism, at least towards the consolidated West.

If that is correct, then I would suggest that most arguments above, on both sides of the issue, are have basically become obsolete and irrelevant.

Furthermore, I would like to add a small reminder here: most of the combat operations in the Ukraine are not even conducted by Russian forces, but by LDNR forces supported by Russian C4ISR and firepower.  But in terms of her real military potential, Russia has used less than 10% of her military and Putin was quite candid about this when he said “we have not even begun to act seriously“.

What do you think this war will look like if Russia decides to really unleash her full military power, that is the 90% of forces which are currently not participating in the SMO?

Here is a simple truth which most folks in the West cannot even imagine: Russia does not fear NATO at all.

If anything, the Russians have already understood that they have the means to impose whatever outcome they chose to unilaterally impose on their enemies.  The notion of a US/NATO attack on Russia is simply laughable.  Yes, the USA has a very powerful submarine force which can fire lots of Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles at Russian targets.  And yes, the US has a still robust nuclear triad.  But neither of these will help the USA win a land war against the Russian armed forces.

And no, sending a few thousands US soldiers to this or that NATO country to “reinforce NATO’s eastern flank” is pure PR, militarily, it is not even irrelevant, it’s laughable.  I won’t even comment on the sending of F-35s which is so utterly ridiculous and useless against the Russian Aerospace Forces and air defenses that I won’t even bother arguing with those who don’t understand how bad both the F-35s (and even the F-22s!) really are.

I won’t dignify the EU’s military capabilities with any comment other than this: countries who now seriously advocate taking less frequent showers to “show Putin!” have sunk to such a level of irrelevance and degeneracy that they cannot be taken seriously, most definitely not in Russia.

So where do we go from here?

As I said, I don’t know, there are too many variables.  But a few things seem clear to me:

• Russia has decided to full unilateralism in her policies towards the Ukraine and the West.  Oh sure, if and when needed, Russians will still agree to talk to their western “partners”, but that is due to the long standing Russian policy of always talking to everybody and anybody, even Russia’s worst enemies.  Why?  Because neither warfare not political unilateralism are an end by themselves, they are only means to achieve a specific political goal.  Thus, it is always good to sit down with your enemy, especially if you have been gently but steadily increasing the pain dial on them for a few months!  The Europeans being the “great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies” (to quite BoJo) they are might cave in quickly and suddenly or, at the very least, they will try to improve their lot by trying to bypass their own sanctions (Uncle Shmuel permitting, however reluctantly).
• The only party with any real agency left with which Russia could seriously negotiate is the USA, of course.  However, as long as the USA under the total control of the Neocons, this is a futile exercise.
• Should there ever be any kind of deal made, it would only be one which would be fully and totally verifiable.  Contrary to popular beliefs, a great many treaties and agreements can be crafted to be fully verifiable, that is not a technical problem by itself.  However, with the current ruling classes of the West, no such deal is likely to be hammered out and agreed by all parties involved.

So what is left?

There is a Russian saying which my grandmother taught me as a kid: “the borders of Russia are found at the end of a Cossack’s spear“.  This saying, born from 1000 years of existential warfare with no natural borders simply expresses a basic reality: the Russian armed forces are the ones who decide where Russia ends.  Or you can flip it this way: “the only natural border of Russia are the capabilities of the Russian armed forces”.  You can think of it has pre-1917 Russian unilateralism 🙂

Still, this begs the question of the moral and ethical foundation for such a stance.  After all, does it not suggest that Russia gives herself the right to invade any country it can just because she can?

Not at all!

While there were imperialist and expansionist wars in Russian history, compared to the West’s 1000 years of wall to wall imperialism, Russia is but a meek and gentle lamb!  Not that this excuses anything, it is simply a fact.  The rest of the Russian wars were, almost all, existential wars, for the survival and freedom of the Russian nation.  I cannot think of a more “just war” than one which 1) was imposed upon you and 2) one in which your sole goal is to survive as a free and sovereign nation, especially a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation as the Russian one has always been, in sharp contrast to the enemies of Russia which were always driven by religious, nationalist and even overtly racist fervor (which is what we can all observe again today, long after the end of WWII).

Is this just propaganda?  If you think so, then you can study Russian history or, better, study the current military doctrine of Russia and you will see that Russia’s force planning is entirely defensive, especially at the strategic level.  The best proof of that is that Russia put up with all the ugly racist and russophobic policies of the Ukraine or the three Baltic statelets for decades without taking any action.  But when the Ukraine became a de facto NATO proxy and directly threatened not only the Donbass, but Russia herself (does anybody still remember that days before the SMO, “Ze” declared that the Ukraine should get nuclear weapons?!), then Russia took action.  You have to be either blind or fantastically dishonest not to admit that self-evident fact.

[Sidebar: by the way, the three Baltic statelets, for which Russia has not use at all, are constantly trying to become a military threat to Russia, not only by hosting NATO forces, but also by truly idiotic plans to “lock” the Baltic with Finland.  Combine this was the Nazi anti-Russian Apartheid policies towards the Russian minorities and you would be forgiven for thinking that the Balts really want to be the next ones to be denazified and demilitarized.  But… but… – you will say  – “since they are members of NATO, they cannot be attacked!”.  Well, if you believe that 1) anybody in NATO will fight Russia over these statelets or 2) that NATO has the military means to protect them, then I have got plenty of great bridges to sell you.  Still, the most effective way to deal with the Balts is to let them commit economic suicide, which they basically have already done, and then promise them a few “economic carrots” for a change to a more civilized attitude.  A Russian saying says that “the refrigerator wins against the TV” (победа холодильника над телевизором) which means that when your refrigerator is empty, the propaganda on TV loses its power.  I think that the future of the 3 Baltic statelets will be defined by that aphorism]

So will the Ukraine be partitioned?

Yes, absolutely, it has already lost huge parts of its territory and it will only lose more.

Might the western neighbors decide to take a bite out off the western Ukraine?  Sure!  That is a real possibility.

But these will all be either unilateral actions or very unofficially coordinated understandings wrapped in plausible deniability (like the deployment Polish “peacekeepers” to “protect” the western Ukraine).  But mostly I predict two things will happen: 1) Russia will achieve all of her goals unilaterally without making any deals with anybody and 2) Russia will only allow the Ukraine’s western neighbors to bite off some chucks of the Ukraine if, and only if, those chunks to not represent any military threat to Russia.

Remember what Putin said about Finland and Sweden and Finland joining NATO?  He said that by itself, this is not a problem for Russia.  But he warned that should these countries host US/NATO forces and weapons systems threatening Russia, than Russia will have to take counter-measures.  I think that this is also the Kremlin’s position about the future of any rump-Banderastan and any moves by NATO countries (including Poland, Romania and Hungary) to reacquire territories which historically belonged to them or which have substantial Polish, Romanian and Hungarian minorities.

Right now, we are only in the second phase of the SMO (which centers of the Donbass) and Russia has not even initiated any operations to move deeper into the Ukraine.  As for the real war, the war between Russia and the combined West, it has been going on for no less than decade, or even more, and this war will last much longer than the SMO in the Ukraine.  Finally, the outcome of this war will see  tectonic and profound changes at least as damatic as the changes resulting from the outcomes of WWI and WWII.

The Russians understand that what they now really must do is to truly finish WWII and that the formal end of WWII in 1945 only marked the transition to a different type of warfare still imposed by a united, consolidated West, but now not by German Nazis but by (mostly) US Neocons (which, of course, are typical racist Nazis, except their racism is Anglo and Judaic/Zionist).

I will conclude with a short quote by Bertold Brecht which, I think, is deeply understood by Russia today:

“Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.
To act instead of talking all day long.
The world was almost won by such an ape!
The nations put him where his kind belong.
But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape –
The womb he crawled from is still going strong.”

― Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui

Russia slaughtered a lot of western apes in her history, now is the time to finally deal with the womb from which they crawled out from.

Andrei

PS: FYI – the Russian investigation has declared that the explosions in the airfield in Crimea was an act of sabotage/diversion.  Which was the most likely explanation to begin with.

‘Nothing Will Be As Before’

June 20, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Western Europe and North America are now in dire economic straits. Four EU leaders, from Germany, France, Italy and Romania, have just been to Kiev to plead with Zelensky to start negotiating again and make territorial concessions. The Western media did not much report on the fourth Romanian/German leader, Klaus Iohannis, and showed few photograph of him; possibly because the racists who work in the Western media despise Romania (https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Romanian+Leader+In+Kiev&qpvt=romanian+leader+in+kiev&FORM=EWRE). What they all forgot to mention is that Russia has no need to negotiate and, given the way that it has been treated since 2014 (indeed, since 1991), it is not going to make concessions.

The EU leaders once more made the illusory promise that the Ukraine might soon become a candidate for EU membership (despite the Dutch veto), if it restarts negotiations. This old carrot dangled before the Ukrainian donkey is irrelevant. The EU has more than four countries and four leaders, whatever promise that the Ukraine may become an EU member in 20 years time. Long before that, there will be no Ukraine and probably no EU. The day after their visit, the Johnson clown went to Kiev too, though we do not know what he spoke of. Presumably, he just wanted to show that the UK is a ‘Great Power’ – like the EU?

It is all too late. Negotiations on the Donbass failed for eight years because the West forbade them. They failed again last March in Belarus and Istanbul, for the same reason. The West in its arrogance believed that it could crush Russia using its Ukrainian cannonfodder. This has been displayed for nearly four months now by the reports of State propaganda mouthpieces like CNN, the BBC etc. with their nonsense that President Putin is dying and that Russia is running out of fuel and ammunition! Wishful thinking all the time. Originally Russia just wanted to liberate the Donbass. However, pig-headedness in Kiev means that they will now be forced to take control of the whole country – and perhaps more, if aggression from outside the Ukraine continues. It was all so unnecessary…

The West cannot go on with its suicidal and illegal sanctions against Russia – or rather against itself. The lack of oil, gas, fertilisers and essential raw materials is biting. Inflation is taking off all over the West. In the UK a wave of strikes is threatened. The incredibly unpopular Johnson’s days are numbered. The only problem for Russia is that the rouble keeps rising. Despite interest rate cuts from 15% to 8.5%, the rouble is again at 56 to the dollar. Clearly, further Russian interest rate cuts are, forgive the pun, in the pipeline. Meanwhile, African and Asian leaders have told Zelensky to stop fighting. They want grain (https://news.mail.ru/politics/ 51814770/ ?frommail=1).

Of course, it is true that many of the West’s woes began well before this year, not least with the absurd and totalitarian ‘covid’ restrictions from 2020 on, which bankrupted many companies and led to it printing ever more money and to ever higher and unpayable debts. The West is desperate for the conflict in the Ukraine to end before the autumn cold sets in. Otherwise there are going to be popular revolts in Western countries, with scenes of looting on the streets.

Western arms, usually third-rate from stocks anyway, are making hardly any difference in the Ukraine. Most, together with munitions, get destroyed before they can be used. Much that has been promised cannot be used because it will take months to instruct Ukrainians on how to use them. The rate of attrition of the Kiev Army, up to 1,000 a day according to Kuleba, the Kiev Interior Minister, is simply unsustainable. Once the fortifications in the Donbass, built by Kiev and NATO over the last eight years, have been overwhelmed, there will be a clear run to Odessa, Transdnestria, Kharkov and Kiev or indeed anywhere that Russia wants. This could happen soon.

Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Defence released figures on mercenaries (https://news.mail.ru/incident/51803470/?frommail=1). The picture is dismal for the Ukraine. Of some 6,000 mercenaries in the Ukraine from 64 different countries, some 2,000 have been killed and some 2,000 have fled. Perhaps they thought that they were going to fight in a Third World country, where the enemy just had Kalashnikovs and not world-beating hypersonic missiles? How long the remaining 2,000 or so will remain alive remains to be seen.

Poland supplied the greatest number of mercenaries, with 1,831. Presumably as with other countries like Canada (601 mercenaries), USA (530), Romania (504), Germany and France, the majority of these were actually Ukrainians who have lived outside the Ukraine for some years, rather than native people. In third place for mercenaries from Europe comes the UK with 422, of whom 102 have been killed and 98 have fled. According to General Konashenkov who released the figures, the number of mercenaries coming has stopped and indeed been reversed. It is too dangerous to stay and get killed in the Ukraine.

This leaves the two foolish British mercenaries, not killed in action with the 102 others, but taken prisoner. And also it leaves two captured US mercenaries. There is speculation that the British might plea for their release in exchange for Julian Assange. That would upset the Americans. On the other hand, the British mercenaries, Eslin and Pinner, have already been sentenced to death. If that sentenced is carried out, it is going to make Johnson even more unpopular than he already is. Perhaps that is why Johnson went to Kiev to plead.

Thus, the first or military stage is coming to an end and should be over later this summer. However, this is only the start. The New Ukraine has to be formed. Then there is the demilitarisation and denazification of the rest of Eastern Europe. And there is the economic war, declared by the West, to be finished. On 17June at the International Economic Forum in his native Saint Petersburg, President Putin said:

‘After the Cold War the USA declared itself to be the emissaries of God on Earth, without any responsibility, only with interests….Today’s changes in economics and in international politics are tectonic and revolutionary. The Western elites are in a state of delusion, clinging on to the shadow of the past and denying changing reality…Nothing will be as before…The EU has definitively lost its political sovereignty. The current situation in Europe will lead to an outburst of radicalism and in the probable future a change of elites’.

Here is the future.

Turkey swings west: the Ukraine war and domestic elections

Ankara’s rapprochement with the US has been accelerated by events in Ukraine. These ties will also shape Turkey domestically, with or without a 2023 Erdogan electoral win.

May 17 2022

While Ankara has always sought to maintain a careful balance between east and west, Turkey’s 2023 election candidates believe they need US support to win.Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Erman Çete

On 7 April, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar chaired a videoconference meeting with his counterparts from five other states to discuss, among other things, the pressing issue of naval mines drifting into the Black Sea.

According to Akar, the origin of the mines could not be identified, but an investigation is ongoing.

The meeting’s agenda was ultimately less notable than its curious participant list. Five of the attending countries – Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine – have borders with the Black Sea, but Russia, a major littoral state, was not invited, while Poland, which has no borders with the waterway, was present.

The mines threat has emerged amid the escalating armed conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s principal intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), warned on 21 March that several hundred mines had drifted into the Black Sea after breaking off from cables near Ukrainian ports. The claim was dismissed by Kiev which accused Moscow of disinformation and trying to close off parts of the strategic waterway.

Nevertheless, since the onset of the conflict in February, four mines have ‘drifted’ into the Black Sea, including one discovered off Romania’s coastline, and three stray mines found in Turkish waters which were safely neutralized.

Turkey’s balancing act

Throughout the crisis, Ankara has had to navigate between Russia and Ukraine and balance its diplomatic ties with both states carefully. As an important NATO member, this has not been a straightforward task for Turkey.

Between 19 to 22 April, NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) organized  Exercise Locked Shields 2022, the largest cyber defense exercise in Tallinn, Estonia. The Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) attended this drill with TAF-affiliated defense company HAVELSAN.

The following day, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Turkey would close its airspace for a three-month period to Russian planes flying to Syria. But the Turkish minister also announced the cancellation of a pre-planned NATO drill to avoid provoking Russia.

Concurrent with this precarious balancing act, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has worked overtime to thaw relations between Ankara and Persian Gulf states and Israel. There are also plans afoot to add Egypt to Turkey’s various regional diplomatic forays.

Resetting relations with the US

At the same time, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has tried to exploit any opportunity to present itself as an indispensable ally to Washington. Talks hosted in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine may have failed to lead to a breakthrough in negotiations, but US President Joe Biden endorsed Turkey’s role as mediator, while State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said that Turkey was “in full coordination and consultation with the US” during the process.

Ankara’s role as a mediator has also been encouraged by US think-tanks such as the United States Institute of Peace, which has called on the US and Europe to support Turkey as the only mediation channel between Russia and the west.

Undoubtedly, the Ukraine conflict has enabled Turkey to reposition itself with Washington as a valuable NATO ally. This has become evident with reports that US military F-16 sales to Turkey are now back on the table again after a period of doubt.

Naturally, pro-AKP media has been praising Erdogan’s role as ‘peacemaker’ and are keen to parlay his accomplishments into a domestic political bonanza. But according to Turkish journalist and commentator Murat Yetkin, AKP’s initial prognosis on the Ukraine conflict was that it would cool down around June and Turkey could shortly thereafter reverse its economic losses arising from the crisis.

It has become apparent, however, that the AKP may have been too rash with that timeframe. Ankara’s leading NATO allies appear less concerned about the destruction of Ukraine and its fallout across Europe than about ‘weakening’ Russia via proxy, with a prolonged war of attrition in mind. For the AKP brass, if the conflict continues into next year, Erdogan’s chances of eking out a victory in Turkey’s 2023 elections could be seriously jeopardized.

Ukraine, a foreign policy tool

Rear Admiral Turker Erturk, Turkey’s former Black Sea commander, believes that the US government gave Turkish military operations in northern Iraq (Operation Claw Lock) the green-light, mainly because of the war in Ukraine. Washington, according to Erturk, will need Turkey in the upcoming stages of the conflict, and has thus become more flexible and transactional with Ankara.

For Erturk, this is a major reason why Erdogan’s government is seeking a balanced approach – in order to negotiate with the US and win the upcoming elections. “Promises made to the US regarding the Ukraine War will be implemented after the election,” he predicts.

Erturk also claims that Washington favors former chief of staff and current Defense Minister Hulusi Akar as the next president of Turkey. The retired rear admiral interprets the Black Sea mines meeting led by Akar – which included the Poles and excluded the Russians – as an message of support to the US. It should be noted that even at the height of US-Turkish tensions and its accompanying leverage contest, Akar stuck his neck out by guaranteeing that Ankara would never break with the western world.

The role of the Turkish Army, post-Erdogan

Akar is not the only military man with a shot at the presidency. Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar, who masterminded the famous Turkish armed drone Bayraktar could also be a political successor. He has also openly voiced support for Ukraine, a gesture likely not intended for domestic audiences.

Bayraktar’s now deceased father, Özdemir Bayraktar, threw his support behind the jailed army officers during the highly politicized Ergenekon (2008-2019) and Balyoz (Sledgehammer, 2010-2015) ‘coup d’etat’ trials. That makes the Bayraktars respected even amongst Kemalist circles – not just for their game-changing armed drones, but also for placing their political clout against the trials.

A Foreign Affairs piece earlier this year by Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, provides an insight into a hypothetical scenario involving an Erdogan-opposition deal for a transition. If a deal cannot be reached, Cagaptay says, Turkish democracy will crumble.

A possible solution to ease this transition, Cagaptay argues, is for the two sides to accept the Turkish Army’s mediation as a “non-partisan” institution, with backing from the US and the EU. The opposition ensures that Erdogan and his family will not be tried, while Erdogan transfers power to the opposition’s candidate and the TAF acts as a guarantor.

Intact foreign policy

Turkey’s opposition alliance, Millet (Nation), which consists of six parties for now, has not decided on its presidential candidate yet. The governing coalition, Cumhur (People), has accused Millet of being agents of the west.

Although both the government and opposition are pro-NATO, some parties in Millet, such as the pro-west Turkish nationalist IYI (Good) Party, want to play a more proactive role in Ukraine against Russia. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who belongs to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), sparked a debate when he was spotted out with the British Ambassador amidst a heavy fall of snow last winter.

Imamoglu once was a leading opposition figure against Erdogan. He defeated the Turkish president twice in local 2019 elections, and his right-wing/moderate political stance was influential even among Erdogan supporters. However, his recent tour in the Black Sea region where his hometown is located, unleashed angry reactions amongst Millet supporters for including pro-Erdogan journalists to cover his visit. Even his own party, CHP, criticized Imamoglu for “breaking the party discipline.”

Now an underdog, Ankara’s Mayor Mansur Yavas, also a CHP member, is leading in Turkey’s election polls. He is a former member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and popular amongst Cumhur’s voter base. Yavas gives the impression that he could be a bipartisan president, a statesman who would oversee a smooth Turkish transition to the post-Erdogan era.

But will the upcoming 2023 elections signify a sharp geopolitical shift in the country’s bearings? A close look at Turkey’s economic situation, and its government’s overtures to the west, suggests not.

Turkey’s relations with Russia, even as a bargaining chip against the west, will likely continue independently of election results, as Ankara has historically sought to maintain its east-west equilibrium. Today, however, both wings of Turkish politics seem set on soliciting western support – to different degrees and in various arenas – to secure an electoral win.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Sitrep: Operation Z

April 28, 2022

Source

By Nightvision

Large amount of significant updates today.

Let’s start with the most pressing – it looks like our reporting on the Transnistria RUMINT last time were accurate, the escalations there are now getting worse. More and more info pours out from every direction that suggests an increasingly grave situation.

Poland and Ukraine both have now announced military ‘exercises’ that will conveniently move equipment towards the east of the country:

⚡️The Ministry of Defense of Poland announced that in connection with the “military exercises” from May 1 until the end of the month there will be heavy movement of columns with equipment in the north, east of the country

“Ukrainian media are reporting that a military exercise has been announced in Kotovsk (AKA Podilsk) from today to the 30th, ~20km from the Transnistrian border.”

Ukrainian media are reporting that a military exercise has been announced in Kotovsk (AKA Podilsk) from today to the 30th, ~20km from the Transnistrian border. pic.twitter.com/QimOqyctbW

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) April 28, 2022

While Transnistria reportedly announced mobilization: https://balkaninsight.com/2022/04/28/moldovas-breakaway-transnistria-orders-general-mobilisation/

And Bulgaria has warned its citizens to leave the country:

“Given the deteriorating situation in the Republic of Moldova and around it, we call on our compatriots to refrain from any trips to the country. We invite Bulgarian citizens who are on the territory of the Republic of Moldova to take measures to leave the country on currently available vehicles .”

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry asks its citizens to leave the country. The appeal is posted on the official website of the department.”

And many citizens in Transnistria were said to be fleeing already as snarled traffic was seen at border checkpoints.

A video of the likely Ukrainian terror attack on Tiraspol’s Ministry building was released, showing several masked gunmen armed with RPG’s shooting the building:

Arestovich has outright called for Moldova to take Transnistria which they “officially” declined, for now: https://www.rt.com/russia/554640-moldova-transnistria-kiev-offer/

Meanwhile the MI6 claims it is Russia that is preparing a mass assault there:

“🔥 Mi-6 sent intelligence to the Office of the President of Ukraine and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that Russia is preparing a landing in Transnistria if an escalation begins, and is also activated on the southern front. Additional forces of the Russian army are being transferred to Crimea, and the Black Sea Fleet is preparing an operation in Bessarabia. British intelligence again recommended Zelensky to refrain from plans to attack the PMR until the Armed Forces of Ukraine are strengthened with new weapons.”

And ex-Prime Minister of Moldova issued the following statement:

“If the Russians manage to get to Tiraspol, it will be the end of Moldova,” ex-Prime Minister of Moldova Iurie Leanca.

“If Bucharest and Chisinau do not implement certain scenarios. Our only scenario is unire (the name of the movement for the unification of Romania and Moldova). When Romania takes this step together with Chisinau, we immediately fall under the security umbrella of NATO and the European Union.”

In the meantime, Washington continues to escalate its involvement, offering even more intelligence assets to Kiev: https://www.rt.com/news/554643-us-intelligence-sharing-ukraine-russia/

And Biden now seeks a gargantuan $33 billion for Ukraine: https://www.rt.com/russia/554685-biden-ukraine-aid/

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/part-bidens-mammoth-33bn-spending-package-will-support-ukraines-information-warfare

Keep in mind, this is 5 times larger than Ukraine’s entire annual military budget of $6 billion.

Ukraine's defense budget was about $6 billion in 2021. That number has more than tripled since Russia's invasion based on American assistance alone.

— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 28, 2022

WarGonzo reports that Moldova is holding secret consultations with NATO on a combined action to retake Transnistria:

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/wargonzoya/specoperaciia-nato-pod-nazvaniem-krovavaia-maiia-626abccc35423263458fed48 (you can autotranslate the article)

Excerpt:

“So, our high-ranking insiders in Chisinau, who are really concerned about the security of ordinary people, report that the head of Moldova, Maia Sandu, is holding closed meetings with parliamentarians in order to convince them to publicly advocate for Moldova’s participation in hostilities against the PMR and the Russian military contingent deployed there. .

Naturally, Sandu does this not out of a personal militaristic nature, but on the orders of his immediate supervisors – German citizen Hans Martin Sieg and American political strategist Jason Smart, who act on instructions and direct instructions from NATO generals who cut up the corresponding tasks.

In the scenarios proposed by the curators, the Moldovan military themselves will allegedly participate nominally, direct participation in hostilities and their deployment, as well as further military planning, will fall on the shoulders of the Romanian Armed Forces. Thus, the NATO bloc is working out another scheme based on the “proxy” principle – the Romanians are fighting, but under the flag of Moldova. In general, according to the classics.

The reconnaissance has already been carried out, heavy weapons and manpower are being pulled together, but there is a problem – Sandu’s loyal associates, realizing the possible targeted consequences for their own persons, do not want to share with her the title of “bloody Maya” and the fate of the comedian Zelensky’s team, which, as we all understand, long ago decided.”

Large Romanian military convoys spotted heading towards the eastern border:

And now, the Russian head of SVR intelligence agency has stated:

Sputnik/RT both reporting it:

https://www.rt.com/russia/554671-poland-ukraine-spy-split/

https://sputniknews.com/20220428/washington-warsaw-discuss-reunification-of-poland–western-ukraine-russian-foreign-intel-chief-1095121664.html

And at the same time, it’s being reported that:

“Washington has set up an intelligence center in Lvov where the Americans work with General Staff officers to get quick information from reconnaissance planes, UAVs and satellites that collect data around and over #Ukraine in space. The staff is about 50 people only from the USA. It is located in one of the communication buildings in Lviv.”

Washington has set up an intelligence center in Lvov where the Americans work with General Staff officers to get quick information from reconnaissance planes, UAVs and satellites that collect data around and over Ukraine in space.

Keep in mind, none of this should come as a surprise as it was weeks ago already that Poland was openly requesting a NATO mission to Ukraine: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-propose-ukraine-peacekeeping-mission-nato-summit-says-pm-2022-03-18/

But now it seems things are escalating and they may take matters into their own hands. Personally, I don’t see much problem with it, why shouldn’t they take the Western part of Ukraine? Russia certainly doesn’t want it and it could be a good ‘compromise’ if something is worked out on the back end. Russia only wants Odessa and in fact would prefer not to have to expend massive manpower and lives lost to conquer the western pale of Ukraine. Of course this is an oversimplification and we don’t know what disaster could turn out from these moves, or what Poland/NATO’s ultimate aims might actually be.

On that note Britain has announced the first official British mercenary killed in Ukraine

“London confirms the death of at least one British subject in Ukraine. Another one went missing. It is known that the killed militant’s name was Scott Sibley. According to rumors, he was a retired British military man who, either out of boredom or under a contract, decided to go on a “Russian safari”. Safari didn’t work.”

Photos: https://twitter.com/DanielBerns5/status/1519726107129528323

🚨UK military veteran Scott Sibley has died in Ukraine. He is believed to have volunteered to fight against Russia. Another British man is missing. pic.twitter.com/d9sXSYRS5o

— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) April 28, 2022

While another group of British mercenaries seen somewhere in Ukraine:

🇬🇧 | Group of #British mercenaries in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/oOEyRl2u05

— D-Donbas (@DonbasTh) April 28, 2022

Two American mercenaries were also badly wounded in Orekhovo, one seemingly blinded for life by Russian artillery. You can read the description in the video below for more details:

Now the most important thing to understand is that all of these escalations are happening for one reason only, and that is: Russia is completely annihilating the Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbass. It is going even more horrifically for the AFU than many imagined. Here are some new videos just from the past day or two alone showing not only possibly hundreds of losses in KIA but new mass surrenders as well:

Today’s mass surrender:

Huge losses (18+): https://www.bitchute.com/video/RFkLPDeIXdfp/

These are unsustainable losses – the AFU is getting crushed and obliterated and the long awaited heavier Russian offensive has not even started yet. It’s getting so bad that even the most infamous pro-western sources are becoming extremely worried:

Jihad Julian is chief amongst them:

Here’s the vile Anders Aslund: https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1519678415456149506

The War: Ukraine has experienced setback in the past few days. A senior Ukrainian official announced yesterday that Russian troops had taken part of the Kharkiv region. Yesterday, Russia announced that it has captured the entire Kherson region. No Ukrainian advances.
Not good.

— Anders Åslund (@anders_aslund) April 28, 2022

“The War: Ukraine has experienced setback in the past few days. A senior Ukrainian official announced yesterday that Russian troops had taken part of the Kharkiv region. Yesterday, Russia announced that it has captured the entire Kherson region. No Ukrainian advances. Not good.”

And another: “Russia is increasing the pace of offensive in Ukraine in all directions, – Speaker of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry Oleksandr Motuzyanyk. Apparently, even the Armed Forces of Ukraine are tired of the lulling lies of Arestovich.”

Not only have Russian advances been smashing Ukrainian defenses, but Russian strikes have continued their upswing on many objects of infrastructure:

“According to reliable information received in the south-west of Kharkov, the headquarters of the TRO/Azov was destroyed. There are dead and wounded.”

There are photos from the destroyed HQ, it looks like there could be a lot of dead.

More critical railway junctures west of Kiev were hit.

Ukraine of course continues its escalations into the asymmetric / terror warfare, hitting various sites on Russian territory. There’s still no certainty of how they’re doing it apart from clues like the fact that several ‘saboteurs’ were arrested in Russia by the FSB yesterday, who were working for Ukrainian SBU. One was in Crimea, had explosives and was planning on bombing a shopping mall in Simferopol.

Many in Russia understandably are feeling fed up, and some believe Russia may eventually designate Ukraine as a terrorist state, which could open pathways for eventual formal declaration of war and mobilization, if need be.

@SamRamani2

· 49m

Russia is likely to formally recognize Ukraine as a terrorist state The assassination attempts on Russian state media figures, which the FSB links to Ukraine’s SBU, and the attacks in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region are the pretexts for this move.

Margarita Semonyan, head of RT/Sputnik, added her voice to the mix. Western critics and some pro-Russian ‘maximalists’ believe she’s slowly softening the Russian public for the eventual acceptance of nuclear use:

“Explosions and air defense sirens in Belgorod. The Anglo-Saxons publicly offer Ukraine to transfer hostilities to the territory of Russia. And supply it with the means to implement this plan. What choice are you giving us, idiots? Complete destruction of the remaining Ukraine? Nuclear strike?”

В Белгороде взрывы и сирены ПВО.

Англосаксы публично предлагают Украине перевести боевые действия на территорию России. И снабжают ее средствами для реализации этого плана.

Вы какой нам оставляете выбор, идиоты? Полное уничтожение оставшейся Украины?

Ядерный удар?

— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) April 28, 2022

And other prominent Russian media figures:

https://twitter.com/ClintEhrlich/status/1519584974885687296

Meanwhile, from the MI6 in UK:

“🇬🇧🇺🇦🔥 Mi-6 have passed intelligence to the Office of the President of Ukraine and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that Russia is preparing strikes against decision-making centers in Ukraine. It is recommended not to use the command posts of the Ministry of Defense, the coordinates of which are known to the Russian special services.”

As of this writing, missiles have hit Kiev but so far it appears to have targeted the Artyom military factory and airfields in the vicinity, not decision centers, but we’ll see. The leadership is likely not worried anyway, there are reports that:

“Zelensky’s wife and children have already received British citizenship. Come on, he himself received it, although this should be contrary to the constitution of Ukraine. But the bloody clown’s parents refused allegiance. Well, at least someone in this family has a conscience.
Also, by the decision of the British government, citizenship was granted to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak and his family members, as well as Zelensky’s adviser Mikhail Podolyak and his family members. A number of employees of the General Staff of Ukraine and the SBU are in the process of receiving.
The Ukrainian elites have prepared an alternate airfield for themselves, but the majority of Ukrainians will be left with a nose.”

The implication is that all the top Ukrainian elite are already receiving British citizenships and are ready to work from abroad in their new home soon.

One of the new Polish Warmate suicide drones has already been shot down by Russia

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1519345294898610176

Large amounts of Western weapons shipments destroyed:

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/russia-says-it-destroyed-large-batch-western-weapons-ship-launched-missiles

And numerous new TB2’s from Turkey’s fresh batch have already been shot down:

Ukraine: Another downed Turkish-made Ukrainian TB2 UAV over Kherson region. pic.twitter.com/SdZRnMxtbZ

— Majd Fahd 🇸🇾 (@Syria_Protector) April 28, 2022

More photos: 

🇷🇺🇺🇦
Shot down #Bayraktar drone in Belgorod region, Russia pic.twitter.com/G2jlJx5mu4

— Tony (@Cyberspec1) April 27, 2022

(another 3^rd one)

There’s photos of at least 3 separate Bayraktar TB2’s shot down since yesterday online. Two of them I believe were on or near the Russian border towards Kursk.

Now as for the offensives that are generating these massive casualties posted above. Russian troops are said to be storming Lyman on the northern front while having captured several small towns NW of there, like Kymky and Oleksandrivka. There are even some reports that advance scout units have already reached the outskirts of Slavyansk through the forest, although that likely wouldn’t mean much as they are not quite ready to start assaulting yet. However residents of Slavyansk already hear heavy bombardments and blasts in the distance as the Russian advance approaches.

On the Izyum axis Russia was said to have fully cleared Zavody and is now assaulting the actual stronghold town of Velyka Komyshuvakha, while on the southern end they are still said to be pushing on Pashkove, past Kurul’ka.

Here’s a decent map: https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/status/1519611022813720576

🇷🇺🇺🇦
Another map of Northern Donetsk region from ths morning
Barvenkovo – black
Aleksandrovka – yellow
Liman – bluehttps://t.co/vRk7PEfhsI pic.twitter.com/eJ1I6wkqDO

— Tony (@Cyberspec1) April 28, 2022

The AFU is already making plans for retreat in Slavyansk as there is footage of the bridge here being heavily mined and ready to blow.

Here’s the video of heavily mined bridge: https://twitter.com/Farnakyboy/status/1519762715119599616

One report: “🔥 Many residents of Slavyansk confirm the information that the Armed Forces of Ukraine mined Kupechesky Bridge in the city. Ukrainian “defenders” are preparing to surrender Slavyansk according to the scenario of Mariupol.”

As can be seen it leads to the city from the eastern end and appears to anticipate falling back and abandoning the eastern entrance.

There’s progress in Popasna and elsewhere as well but will save it for next time.

For now will turn to the final and other most important sector of Mariupol as there’ve been some big updates.

Firstly, both 2^nd in Command of Azov Kalina, and 36^th Brigade commander Volyna have released new videos absolutely pleading for western help.

Kalina’s message 

Azov's second-in-command keeps sending messages from the bunker beneath Azovstal, explains how they have been defending against Russian ships for 64 years in ever more desperate metaphors, keeps asking for "extraction" pic.twitter.com/iRgG0osNud

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) April 28, 2022

Volyna: https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1519309276568866817 with translation of his message:

In short, he begs for a massive WW2 Dunkirk style airlift to save Azov. Unfortunately Russia has reportedly continued bombing them https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1519645150603055104

📽️A ceiling collapsed in Azovstal shelter as a result of Russian shelling. There are victims #Ukraine #Mariupol #UkraineRussiaWar pic.twitter.com/owuGvHKkIq

— MilitaryLand.net (@Militarylandnet) April 28, 2022

and things have gotten really desperate.

The entire northern part (cement factory, etc) appears to be under Russian control now:

Northern part of Azovstal under Russian control, red arrow shows where video was taken. Geolocation: https://t.co/e7xvI2MRtj
Map: https://t.co/F5dNANXO7Shttps://t.co/xnBXs0in24 pic.twitter.com/NhNTBxRx9N

— MapperKrumm (@Krummapper) April 28, 2022

Last time we noted how various forces were working to pinpoint the secret Azov lairs and hideouts. Now they’ve managed to finally do it.

“We made a complete diagram of the Azovstal bunkers, and their connections to each other. Above is the number of the defensive structure, below are the exact coordinates.

Green – transitions between protective structures (laying from 18 to 45 meters) The main headquarters of Azov is located in protective structure No. 18182, a bomb shelter for the central chemical laboratory of the plant, for 300 people. The civilians are partly located in object No. 18207 and 18170.”

This report claims negotiators have arrived:

#AZOVSTAL—#Ukraine|ian (!) negotiators have arrived in #Bezymennoye settlement near #Mariupol in an effort to convince #Azov (#Ukrainian #NationalGuard regiment) to release civilians being held by them at Azovstal. Looks like Azov is getting on everyone’s nerves now. #UkraineWar

#AZOVSTAL—#Ukraine|ian (!) negotiators have arrived in #Bezymennoye settlement near #Mariupol in an effort to convi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Gleb Bazov (@gbazov) April 27, 2022

It was reported last time how there’s friction between Azov and Kiev leadership. They requested to be sent to a ‘third country’ of preferably Turkey, and I mentioned how in the past Kiev has even bombed the Azov regiment about a month ago.

https://tass.com/world/1416593

Alexander Sladkov said 2 days ago that Azov only had 9 days of food left. In his new report it was said, “The militants used the building of the sanitary and epidemiological station. 3rd floor completed.

DEFENSE FEATURES OF “AZOVSTAL”. THEY HAVE A LOT OF WATER, INSTEAD OF STOVES THEY USE BARREL WITH ANTISEPTIC, THEY DO NOT GIVE SMOKE.

Ours, moving forward, found a huge warehouse of water at the plant. The militants did not even begin to evacuate him – they have a sea of \u200b\u200bwater. They say there is 9 days of food left.”

And according to Maxim Fomkin aka Vladlen Tatarsky, a prominent DPR soldier/blogger, the Azovstal will be taken by 4/30.

Here’s Sladkov’s report showing entire northern section of Azovstal being cleared: https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1519631657799725056

In short, they appear to be only a few buildings away from where the Azov leadership are holed up so things are set to come to a head in some manner soon.

Russia in the meantime continues to move troops out as one western report stated:

“NEW: Russia is moving “significant” numbers of troops out of Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol to the north and northwest: senior U.S. defense official Russia is still hitting Mariupol with airstrikes. had about a dozen battalion tactical groups in the city.”

Lastly, here’s one of the many advanced things aiding Russian forces in the final capture of Azovstal:

A Russian Fara-VR tactical battlefield radar system that detects both troops and vehicles, through walls at distance, and can relay that information to tankers and troop units for immediate focus fire destruction of the enemies. It’s a very impressive piece of kit that was used by Spetsnaz in Syria but hasn’t gotten such closeup attention until now.

https://roe.ru/eng/catalog/land-forces/ground-surveillance-radars/fara-vr/

Sitrep: Operation Z

April 26, 2022

Source

By Nightvision

Today we start with the largest news. Ukraine continues escalating provocations in the asymmetrical/guerilla/insurgent direction as we’ve outlined in previous sitreps. Last time an oil depot was hit in the Belgorod district, it was reported that Russia moved a new S-400 system near the Kharkov border. So now Ukraine shifted its tactics further north out of range, and we see sabotage of various sorts occurring on the Russian border 250-300km NW of Kharkov.

Not only oil tanks hit in Bryansk (no evidence of air attack this time, possible on the ground sabotage), but various shelling of villages, and attempts to sabotage Russia’s rail systems, as explosives were found: https://i.postimg.cc/Y9qskhtC/FRPzb-S6-Vk-AAcy-U9.jpg

Also in the region it was said two new Bayraktar TB2’s were shotdown. Photos of one of them:

A new Turkish cargo plane landed in Poland yesterday as well, likely carrying a fresh batch of TB2’s, so we expect to see more shotdown in the near future. Over 40 have already been shot down.

Now Ukraine is stirring something up in Transnistria. Multiple sabotage attacks have occurred, including one on a military installation, destroying two radio towers and damaging others.

https://www.rt.com/russia/554556-transnistria-president-terror-attacks-ukraine/

https://twitter.com/SilksworthPost/status/1518880598605017089

Transnistria now erecting barricades: 

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1519045236617584640

There is a lot of talk and rumor now, like the following: “Now Transnistrian telegram accounts are claiming Ukrainian military massed on their border: “According to subscribers. On the border with Transnistria, a large concentration of Ukrainian troops was noticed, in particular tanks and other armored vehicles”

And much of this rumor could be dismissed if it weren’t for the suspicious attacks that now suddenly occur on Transnistrian land, and the following statements from a prominent Ukrainian journalist and as of last year ex-advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, who reportedly said today:

“Ukraine has the legal right to demilitarize the military facilities of the Russian troops that threaten us,” the editor-in-chief of the odious publication Censor wrote on social networks. no, adviser to the head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Yuriy Butusov.

He said that this would make it possible to capture Russian prisoners for exchange, “eliminate the threat of a breakthrough by Russian troops”, seize large arsenals of ammunition. Release two Ukrainian brigades that are stationed on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border

There is only one chance left to save Mariupol – a strike on Transnistria” – Advisor to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine.”

https://news.obozrevatel.com/vojna-v-ukraine/putin-vyibral-put-totalnoj-vojnyi-butusov-obyasnil-pochemu-nuzhen-udar-po-pridnestrovyu-i-kak-eto-spaset-mariupol.htm (autotranslate this article)

(Russia, by the way, has over 4000 AFU prisoners, 300 of them officers. More POWs were taken in Illych Steel Plant alone than all of RF and LPR/DPR prisoners in Ukrainian hands combined.)

So, not only is he floating this idea as a way to seize large arsenals of ammo as we’ve already outlined above, but as a final hail-mary shot to save Mariupol by seizing enough Russian prisoners that could be used as leverage in an exchange. Interestingly enough, this comment coincides with yesterday’s demands from Arestovych/Kiev, that:

1. there should be a negotiation with Russia done right at the walls of the Azovstal factory and

2. that Russian POWs should be exchanged for all the Azov militants and 36^th Brigade marines currently trapped in the factory.

The problem with this demand is that Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere near the amount of POWs that would match the number of remaining militants in Azovstal. Ukraine “claims” to have around 500 total POWs for Russia/DPR/LPR, and this number is likely greatly inflated by double or more. Azovstal on the other hand has 2000+ trapped militants remaining by some reports. So apparently some in Kiev imagine the capture of Russian peacekeepers in Transnistria could equalize this trade and allow the exchange for the trapped Azovites.

“#Ukraine and #Romania plan joint aggression against #Transnistria (Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic) late April-early May. Romanian military disguised as Moldovan military are training in camps in Romania and arrive in #Moldova in large numbers. Details: https://t.me/ZradaXXII/1959”

There’s rumor that a ‘large number of Romanian soldiers and officers’ have been deployed to Moldova under Moldovan uniforms, including officers and commanders replaced by Romanian counterparts.

The objective appears to be a huge military storage site in Kolbasnaya, that people are hyperbolically saying has enough artillery shells to last a 10 year war. Ukraine is understandably foaming at the mouth to acquire this ammunition as they are in dire shortage of same. “Rumors” that an attack on Tiraspol is already being planned for late April to early May.

This is troubling due to the compounding nature of other reports about clandestine buildups from Poland and other countries.

This was a report from around the time of the Moskva hit:

“Two days ago: The NATO Secret Monitoring Service started working in Odessa and tracking the ships of the Russian Navy. This was reported by RIA Novosti with reference to a source in the Russian law enforcement agencies and his Ukrainian informant.

According to the interlocutor of the agency, the NATO monitoring group operates in one of the suburbs of Odessa. Service workers are equipped with equipment that allows determining the exact coordinates of any vessel in the Black Sea within a radius of 200 kilometers.

The main specialists are employees of the Romanian PMC Nordstarsupport Group.
The interlocutor also noted that the tasks of the group are to prevent the landing of Russian troops in the Odessa region and the issuance of the location of Russian ships for targeting Ukrainian anti-ship missiles “Neptune”.”

Russia then announced the investigation of at least two British SAS special ops groups in Lvov: https://www.rt.com/news/554380-ukraine-uk-sas-sabotage

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10746503/Putin-hunts-SAS-Ukraine-Russia-launches-probe-British-elite-specialists-sabotage.html

And one report says that: “French sources report that servicemen of the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment, which is part of the Special Operations Forces, were deployed to Ukraine. The group includes instructors on the use of MILAN anti-tank systems and AT-4 grenade launchers”

As for Poland, we hear this rumor:

“❗️Poland is secretly preparing a “liberation campaign” against Ukraine. For this purpose, a set of measures is being carried out – the supply of weapons, equipment and mercenaries across the Polish-Ukrainian border. Several formations of the Polish Army – the 18th motorized rifle division and the 6th airborne brigade – are preparing for a “peacekeeping mission”

The Polish Army stepped up measures to the maximum extent possible to complete the units to wartime states. The recruitment of “volunteers” is carried out through the websites of the Ministry of Defense of Poland.”

Now, much of that is very speculative but they add up to a growing concert of evidence regarding western powers / NATO’s increasing involvement in Ukraine’s western flank. In fact some of these are from a few days ago and I held them back due to their speculative nature, but due to today’s concrete attacks on Transnistria, these things begin to look more and more real.

While some of this could revolve around an effort to free Azov militants, much of it is likely an escalation to thwart Russia’s coming destruction of the JFO grouping in Donbass. More and more reports pour from the Donbass of how badly it’s starting to look for Ukraine. Not only are there dozens of daily surrenders on every front, but huge losses in KIA each day and more and more from both groups are being identified as reservists sent from the far West, with little training.

Here’s one report

#UKRAINE—In preparation for #Russia|n offensive & due to severe lack of personnel & low morale among servicemen, #UA General Staff is preparing the following Territorial Defence Brigades for immediate transfer to #Donbass: —101st #Uzhgorod —102nd #IvanoFrankovsk —103rd #Rovno ½

These are lowly trained territorial defense showing up now on the eastern front. And judging by recent surrenders, they look it – many of them old and haggard. Last sitrep around 20 surrendered near Donetsk, today we have another batch of ~80 captured from Yampil on the northern front.

https://twitter.com/PelmeniPusha/status/1518991158479056896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1518991158479056896%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthesaker.is%2Fsitrep-operation-z-15%2F

Video: https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1519013593324437505

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1519013593324437505

Alt link: https://www.bitchute.com/video/faCuHupYndeO/

And the KIAs coming from the new pushes are more numerous than ever. I’ve refrained in the past from posting too much of it but the recent uptick in Ukrainian/Western propaganda about how Ukraine is ‘winning’ requires me to offset it by showing the stark reality of what’s happening on the ground:

Warning graphic (18+). These are the types of massive losses the AFU is taking just in the past day or two alone:

#Ukrainian paratroopers of the 25th Airmobile Brigade were destroyed at Novotroitsky area #Donbass pic.twitter.com/ZpsehVPYC8

— Middle East Update (@islamicworldupd) April 26, 2022

And for those that keep talking about phantom AFU campaigns in Kherson. Here’s what really happened in Kherson yesterday, Russia stormed AFU positions in Oleksandrivka with huge AFU losses. Complete destruction of their positions:

(18+) https://www.bitchute.com/video/XyhbW1JQ8ORM/

I don’t think we’ll be seeing any ‘offensive’ from them anytime soon.

Russia launched massive attacks on infrastructure last night as well, destroying many key rail lines and bridges.

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1518939305296777218

https://twitter.com/Levi_godman/status/1518902869226934272

A map showing all the strategic rail crossings that were hit:

And another map: 

Seven traction substations reportedly hit by Russian missiles today (the mushroom cloud icons on the map). Railway system in Western & Central Ukraine heavily damaged. pic.twitter.com/ZSGYKKEXqf

— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) April 25, 2022

Russian MOD confirmations: 

https://twitter.com/Levi_godman/status/1518636779720564736

https://www.rt.com/russia/554519-russia-hits-supply-ukraine/

Western supply lines in Ukraine destroyed – Russia

It is believed that this is the final softening phase before a stronger offensive in Donbass begins. Western weapons will now have a much harder time getting to the frontline, particularly heavy weapons like tanks/artillery which are now said to be provided soon to Ukraine. These require railways to get to the frontline.

And on that topic of heavy arms to Ukraine, something important to note: many countries are now cobbling together a Frankenstein list of “high end” heavy arms to contribute. T-72’s and M-84’s from Poland and Slovenia, Marders, Leopards, and PzH2000’s from Germany, Cesar Howitzers from France, Mastiffs, Wolfhound, and Husky vehicles from UK, Archer artillery systems from Sweden, Humvees, M113 APC’s from U.S., and M777’s from Canada, and on and on and on.

For anyone versed in military matters, this is absolutely ridiculous. There is no way in hell the Ukraine will be able to utilize any of this stuff in any productive capacity for long. Firstly, the vast majority of it will never reach the frontlines and will be destroyed in transit. But just to play devil’s advocate, even if it were to actually reach the frontlines, any military analyst worth their salt knows that it’s a huge detriment to operate many non-interoperable systems on the frontlines due to the complete nightmare it creates in lack of parts and ability to properly maintain or repair this equipment.

In fact at the start of the SMO, Russia was heavily criticized by some military blogs because Russia uses so many different variants of each system concurrently, and this creates problems for maintenance and logistics – for instance T-72, T-72a, T-72b, T-72b3, T-72b3m, etc, etc. But of course Russia has the military infrastructure to deal with this, Ukraine doesn’t.

In a previous sitrep I already reported how Ukraine no longer even has an ability to repair its tanks and they have to be shipped out to Czech Republic who will now be handling the repair outsourcing because Russia has destroyed the AFU’s maintenance infrastructure. War is all about logistics, and to have this gigantic Frankenstein mess of dozens of different systems all utilizing different types of ammunition and parts that can’t be sourced adequately on the frontlines is a complete joke. It will never work and would quickly bog down into an intractable mess of quickly abandoned equipment.

In short, all this equipment is not much worry as the logistics problems it creates are simply insurmountable in the long run, even if it makes it to the frontlines in the first place. I would worry more about the supply of legacy soviet ammunition for the artillery systems Ukraine still operates.

There are signs of desperation from Ukrainian commanders in that regard:

“First Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky, serving in Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade: “the situation is very bad, [Russians] simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night.”

First Lt. Ivan Skuratovsky, serving in Ukraine's 25th Airborne Brigade: “the situation is very bad, [Russians] simply destroy everything with artillery, shelling day and night." @ChristopherJM's first one for @politico https://t.co/NaP0kgvBvX

— Paul McLeary (@paulmcleary) April 25, 2022

“Grenade launchers are good, but against airstrikes and heavy artillery we won’t be able to hold out for long.” Ukrainian troops told me they need Western military aid, particularly drones & artillery, ASAP. They fear if they don’t get it they could end up like those in Mariupol.”

"Grenade launchers are good, but against airstrikes and heavy artillery we won't be able to hold out for long." Ukrainian troops told me they need Western military aid, particularly drones & artillery, ASAP. They fear if they don't get it they could end up like those in Mariupol. https://t.co/gifoCSPkBS

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 25, 2022

-On the frontlines, Izyum continues to get reinforced by the 1st Tank Army and elements of the 20^th Guards Combined Arms Army.

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1519018123348922368

Some advances have been noted. The west flank of Izyum is being secured:

Looks like RF advanced west of #Izyum pic.twitter.com/NWX1F9N2l6

— — GEROMAN — time will tell – 👀 — (@GeromanAT) April 26, 2022

And since the mentioned prisoners were taken in Yampil, that town is likely to fall in the near future, opening up the way for Lyman.

Here’s a good map of the current: https://twitter.com/Denyo666/status/1519023312722137088/photo/1

Note that Zavody on the western end of Izyum is still disputed but RF is actively attacking it as we speak. And south of Kurul’ka (the salient south of Izyum), forward scout units of the RF are advancing on and have been attacking around Pashkove, which is only a few kilometers from an all-important railway that runs through Barvinkove. This railway has supplied Slavyansk from the west and whether Russia has hit its junctures with strikes or not, the goal here is clearly to advance south a few more kilometers and capture the railway and Barvinkove as well, cutting Slavyansk agglomeration off.

The only other thing of note is reports that Russian forces are now fighting at Gulyaipole which is a major stronghold town of the AFU on the west Donetsk line which Russia has been creeping towards for weeks. Once Gulyaipole and its eastern stronghold neighbor of Velyka Novosilka are captured, it creates an almost free pathway towards the main highway artery that supplies the Donetsk grouping from Zaporizhzhia.

As for Mariupol, there are more images of the Azov wounded:

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1519001090863292422

DPR head also announced that Azovstal factory will not be rebuilt, while Azovmash and Illych factories to the north of it will be. This could be an ominous warning for Azov remnants as it would mean Russia would have no qualms in destroying the Azovstal completely. The only thing that appears to be stopping them is the apparent confirmation that Azov is in fact holding many civilians (they claim 1000) hostage in the basement, including many children, of which videos have now been released.

They are clearly using the civilians as their last bargaining chip and it’s a difficult situation for Russia to navigate as it does not want to create a massacre of women and children by bombing the positions nor be responsible for their starving by besieging the factory indefinitely. This is the chief reason that negotiations continue.

There were some reports that Azov doesn’t trust Kiev and in fact now wants to be released to a “3^rd country”, which is reportedly Turkey. If true, this would make sense as there were reports weeks ago that Kiev in fact even launched Tochka missiles at Azov in Mariupol, showing a clear secret friction of some sort between the nationalist battalion and Ukrainian authorities.

https://tass.com/world/1416593

Here’s a current map of Mariupol, with a confirmed location of where the civilians are being held in the bomb shelter:

A few other random bits of news:

Governor Kim of Nikolayev has admitted to the creation of death squads to root out and kill “traitors” extra-judicially

https://www.rt.com/russia/554475-ukraine-governor-traitors-extrajudicial-executions/

This is further proof of what was done elsewhere in Ukraine, notably in Bucha where it’s now proven that the SBU hit squads liquidated ‘traitors’ on the heels of the Russian troop pullback.

Also, a commander of the DPR named Eduard Pelishenko, with the call sign “Crimea”, was said to be ‘seriously wounded’ near Donetsk by a “loitering munition”. This could potentially be the first sign of Switchblade-300 usage on the battlefield. Though he is expected to survive but it shows what we’ve discussed long ago, that the Switchblade-300 in particular will be used for covert assassinations of VIP targets.

Ukraine wants $2 billion per month from the Biden admin. https://www.rt.com/news/554520-ukraine-wants-2bn-dollars-month-from-us/

And lastly, Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, has stated what’s been on all of our minds:

Ukraine May Collapse Into Several Independent Countries, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Says

https://sputniknews.com/20220426/ukraine-may-collapse-into-several-independent-countries-russias-security-council-secretary-says–1095073511.html

This appears to be the first such verbalized confirmation from the Kremlin side of the likely direction Ukraine is headed in.

The Moskva Riddle

April 25, 2022

by Pepe Escobar

Neither NATO nor Russia is telling us what really happened with the Moskva, the legendary admiral ship of the Black Sea fleet.

NATO because in theory, they know. Moscow, for its part, made it clear they are not saying anything until they can be sure what happened.

One thing is certain. If the Russian Ministry of Defense finds out that NATO did it, they will let loose all the dogs from Hell on NATO, as in “asymmetrical, lethal and fast”.

On Moskva’s location: it was positioned near one of 3 drilling rigs, used for monitoring a whole sector of the Black Sea with hydrophones and NEVA-BS radar, the most westward one, BK-2 Odessa, approximately 66 km northeast from Snake Island. The whole thing was integrated in the regional monitoring systems. As in everything, literally, was monitored: ships, low flying targets, smaller echoes, even the bobbing head of an unsuspecting swimmer.

So there was a quite slim chance that anything – not to mention subsonic Neptune missiles and Bayraktar drones – could have slipped through this aerial net.

So what could have possibly happened?

It could have been some kind of underwater drone, released either from some sneaky sub, or by a SBS team, coming from the western coast, with a stopover at Snake Island. Then that drone somehow managed to drill itself through the Moskva’s hull from below – and exploded its payload inside.

What follows comes from a top source in Brussels: serious, trustworthy, proven record spanning nearly two decades. Yet he may be just spreading disinformation. Or bragging. Or that may be rock solid intel.

Before we start, we should point out it’s hard to believe the Neptune/Bayraktar fairytale angle. After all, as we’ve seen, the Russian fleet had established a multidimensional surveillance/defense layer in the direction of Odessa.

The Moskva was near Odessa, closer to Romania. A year ago, the source maintains, a new phased array locator was installed on it: the illumination range is 500 km. According to the standard Ukrainian narrative, first the Moskva was hit by a drone, and the locators and antennas were smashed. The Moskva was half blind.

Then – according to the Ukrainian narrative – they launched two Neptune cruise missiles from the shore. Guidance was carried out by NATO’s Orion, which was hanging over Romania. The missiles zoomed in on the ship with the homing heads turned off, so that the radiation beam would not be detected.

So we have guidance by NATO’s Orion, transmitting the exact coordinates, leading to two hits, and subsequent detonation of ammunition (that’s the part acknowledged by the Russian Ministry of Defense).

A strategic hit

The Moskva was on combat duty 100-120 km away from Odessa – controlling the airspace within a radius of 250-300 km. So in fact it was ensuring the overlap of the southern half of Moldova, the space from Izmail to Odessa and part of Romania (including the port of Constanta).

Its positioning could not be more strategic. Moskva was interfering with NATO’s covert transfer of military aircraft (helicopters and fighter jets) from Romania to Ukraine. It was being watched 24/7. NATO air reconnaissance was totally on it.

As the Moskva “killer”, NATO may have not chosen the Neptune, as spread by Ukrainian propaganda; the source points to the fifth-generation NSM PKR (Naval Strike Missile, with a range of 185 km, developed by Norway and the Americans.)

He describes the NSM as “able to reach the target along a programmed route thanks to the GPS-adjusted INS, independently find the target by flying up to it at an altitude of 3-5 meters. When reaching the target, the NSM maneuvers and deploys electronic interference. A highly sensitive thermal imager is used as a homing system, which independently determines the most vulnerable places of the target ship.”

As a direct consequence of hitting the Moskva, NATO managed to reopen an air corridor for the transfer of aircraft to the airfields of Chernivtsi, Transcarpathian and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

In parallel, after the destruction of the Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet, according to the source, “no longer seems to have a ship equipped with a long-range anti-aircraft missile system”. Of course a three-band radar Sky-M system remains in play in Crimea, capable of tracking all air targets at a range of up to 600 km. One wonders whether this is enough for all Russian purposes.

So what do we really have here? Fantasy or reality? There was only one way to know.

I ran the info past the inestimable Andrei Martyanov, who knew the Moskva “as Slava in 1981 when she was afloat in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol and my class which was at first summer practice on board of old cruiser Dzerzhinsky was given an extensive introduction to her. So, she was an old lady and it is too bad that she had to finish her long life this way and at this time.”

Martyanov, once again, was the consummate professional, stressing no one, at this stage, really knows what happened. But he made some crucial points: “Per NSM (if we accept this version), even with its Low Observability and GPS guidance under normal (that is sea up to state 5-6) and normal radio-permeability, even the Moskva’s old frigate radar would have seen those missiles in distances of tens of kilometers, somewhere between 15-20 for sure. NSM, as any NATO anti-shipping missile, are subsonic, with their velocity roughly 300 meters per second. That leaves, even in a 15 kilometer range, 45 seconds to detect track and develop a firing solution for whatever ‘on duty’ AD complex. More than enough reaction time.”

Martyanov also stresses, “it is impossible to hide the external impact of the anti-shipping missile – one will immediately know what hit the ship. Moreover, to hit and sink such a target as the Moskva one has to launch a salvo and not only two missiles, likely 3-4 at least. In this case, Russia would know who attacked Moskva. Does NATO know? I am positive this event has NATO written all over it, if it is not an internal sabotage which absolutely cannot be excluded at this stage. I am sure if Nebo was operational it would have seen the salvo.”

Which brings us to the inevitable clincher: “If NATO was involved, I am sure we will see some retaliation, after all, as I am on record all the time, US bases in Middle East and elsewhere are nothing more than fat prestigious targets.”

So get ready: something lethally “asymmetrical” may be about to pop up.

Can Europe overcome hatred, racism, embrace universalist spirit of refugee convention?

April 17 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen

Ruqiya Anwar 

The hardship of white Ukrainian refugees was humanized by the United States and Europe, while the West showed racism and double standards when it came to hosting refugees from the global south that were escaping western funded wars in the first place.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov described Ukrainian refugees as Europeans concluding “These are intelligent individuals”

The Ukraine crisis has caused one of Europe’s greatest and fastest refugee migrations since World War II ended. A massive amount of people had fled to neighboring countries. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as many as four million people could evacuate the country in the next weeks. The European Union (EU) estimates that there will be seven million refugees by the end of the year. 

It has revealed significant disparities in the treatment of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, particularly Syrians who arrived in 2015. However, Europe’s radically divergent responses to these two crises serve a warning lesson for those seeking a more humane and generous Europe. The distinctions also explain why some of those fleeing Ukraine, particularly African, Asian, and Middle Eastern, are not receiving the same lavish treatment as Ukrainian citizens (Tayyaba, 2022).

However, we are aware that this is not how the international protection regime has worked in Europe, particularly in countries now hosting Ukrainian refugees. Racist and xenophobic language towards refugees and migrants, particularly those from Middle Eastern nations, pervades public discourse in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, and hostile actions such as border pushbacks and draconian detention measures have been taken in the past.

Notably, Hungary, since the 2015 refugee crisis, the country has refused to accept refugees from non-EU countries. Non-European refugees, according to Prime Minister Victor Orbán, are “Muslim invaders” and migrants are “a poison”, and Hungary should not welcome refugees from diverse cultures and religions to preserve its cultural and ethnic unity. 

More recently, in late 2021, the atrocious treatment of refugees and asylum seekers stranded on Belarus’s borders with Poland and Lithuania, most of whom were from Iraq and Afghanistan, provoked an outcry across Europe. Belarus has been accused of turning these people’s misfortune into a weapon by luring them to Belarus to travel to EU countries in retribution for EU sanctions.

Whereas hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian migrants pour into neighbouring nations, clutching their children in one arm and their valuables. And leaders from nations like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania have greeted them.

While hospitality has been praised, it has also brought significant disparities in the treatment of migrants and refugees from the Middle East, particularly Syrians who arrived in 2015. Some of them claim that the language used by politicians currently welcoming refugees is upsetting and cruel.

According to Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, “These are not the refugees we’re familiar with. These are Europeans. These are intelligent individuals. They are well-educated individuals. This is not the type of refugee surge we’ve seen before, with people whose identities we didn’t know, people with murky pasts, and even terrorists”.

However, when over a million individuals walked into Europe in 2015, there was initially a lot of support for refugees fleeing crises in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There were also instances of animosity, such as when a Hungarian camerawoman was caught on camera kicking and potentially tripping migrants near the country’s Serbian border (CNC, 2022)

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Arab Uprisings of 2011 increased the number of refugees attempting to enter Europe. Even Turkey, which already hosts over 4 million migrants and asylum seekers, including 3.6 million Syrians, could not effectively accommodate them. However, the reception of these minority refugees in European countries has been overwhelmingly unfavourable.

Hundreds of Afghan, Syrian, Iraqi, and other asylum seekers were stranded in Poland-Belarus woodlands and marshes in 2021, without shelter, food, or water in subzero temperatures and facing constant assaults from Polish and Belarusian border authorities. At least a dozen people were killed, including children. Yet, the European Union refused to open the border.

Significantly, although walls are an inadequate means to handle the movement of refugees and migrants, wall-building has been on the rise in the region since the 1990s. Then, the European continent celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to a 2018 Transnational Institute analysis, the primary goal of these walls is to dissuade refugees and asylum seekers from the Global South.

Greece finished building a wall along its border with Turkey in 2021 to keep Afghan asylum seekers out. The Spanish government now intends to construct the world’s tallest wall in northern Morocco, where it claims the power to block migrant access into Spain, which is only 250 miles away.

Lithuania has been constructing an 11-foot-high steel fence with 2-inch-thick razor wire on its border with Belarus since 2021 to prevent migrants from the Middle East and North Africa from entering the country. EU states have agreed to accept Ukrainian refugees for up to three years without requiring them to seek asylum. Poland has stated that it will absorb 1 million Ukrainians. Lithuania, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Moldova, Greece, Germany, and Spain are among the countries that have already opened their borders.

Unfortunately, these double standards have shown in the attitude of non-Ukrainians leaving Ukraine’s conflict. Students and refugees from the Middle East have been subjected to racist abuse, obstruction, and violence while attempting to exit Ukraine in increasing numbers. Many others said they were barred from boarding trains and buses in Ukrainian cities because Ukrainian nationals were given precedence; others said they have violently moved aside and halted by Ukrainian border guards when attempting to pass into neighbouring countries.

There were tales about non-white refugee communities that had gone unrecorded and unpublished. Despite their huge number and agonizing battles across countries and continents, millions of Syrian refugees remained anonymous and blankly depicted in the media. While standing in line at the border and seeking to get crucial services, a number of non-Ukrainians of colour, including Africans, Afghans, and Yemenis, have experienced prejudice.

The astonishing double standards were on full display in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis and the early phases of the conflict that followed. The hardship of white Ukrainian refugees was humanized by the United States and Europe, as well as their different political spectrums. When the refugees were Arabs or Muslims, Black or Brown, however, it remained vehemently divided.

Moreover, the Polish authorities detained people and refused them to enter the country. The refugee crisis in Ukraine provides Europe with not only an important opportunity to demonstrate its generosity, humanitarian values, and commitment to the global refugee protection regime, and it also provides a critical opportunity for reflection, Can Europe’s people overcome widespread racism and hatred and embrace the universalist spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention? All member states must apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion, or country of origin.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Andrei Martyanov on “RKR Moskva and Sitrep On The Run”

April 15, 2022

The Total War to Cancel Russia

April 09, 2022

source

By Pepe Escobar,

Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated.

By now it’s abundantly clear that the neo-Orwellian “Two Minute Hate” Russophobic campaign launched by the Empire of Lies after the start of Operation Z is actually “24/7 Hate”.

Vast swathes of NATOstan have been corralled into behaving like a Russophobic lynch mob. No dissent is tolerated. The full psyops has de facto upgraded the Empire of Lies to the status of Empire of Hate in a Total War – hybrid and otherwise – to cancel Russia.

Hate, after all, packs way more punch than mere lies, which are now veering into abject ridiculousness, as in U.S. “intelligence” resorting to – what else – lies to fight the info war against Russia.

If the propaganda overdrive has been lethally effective amidst the zombified Western masses – call it a “win” in the P.R. war – in the front where it really matters, inside Russia, it’s a major fail.

Public opinion support for both Operation Z and President Putin is unprecedented. After videos of torture of Russian POWs that caused widespread revulsion, Russian civil society is even bracing for a “Long War” lasting months, not weeks, as long as the targets of the Russian High Command – actually a military secret – are met.

The stated aims are “demilitarization” and “denazification” of a future neutral Ukraine – but geopolitically reach way beyond: the aim is to turn the post-1945 European collective security arrangement upside down, forcing NATO to understand and come to terms with the concept of “indivisible security”. This is an extremely complex process that will reach the next decade.

The NATOstan sphere simply cannot admit in public a series of facts that a military analyst of the caliber of Andrei Martyanov has been explaining for years. And that adds to their collective pain.

Russia can take on NATO and smash it to bits in 48 hours. It may employ advanced strategic deterrence systems unmatched across the West. Its southern axis – from the Caucasus and West Asia to Central Asia – is fully stabilized. And if the going gets really tough, Mr. Zircon can deliver his hypersonic nuclear business card with the other side not even knowing what hit it.

“Europe has chosen its fate”

It may be enlightening to see how these complex processes are interpreted by Russians – whose points of view are now completely blocked across NATOstan.

Let’s take two examples. The first is Lieutenant General L.P. Reshetnikov, in an analytical note examining facts of the ground war.

Some key takeaways:

– “Over Romania and Poland there are airborne early warning aircraft of NATO with experienced crews, there are U.S. intelligence satellites in the sky all the time. I remind you that just in terms of budgets for our Roscosmos we allocated $2.5 billion a year, the civil budget of NASA is $25 billion, the civil budget of SpaceX alone is equal to Roscosmos – and that is not counting the tens of billions of dollars annually for the entire U.S. feverishly unfolding the control system of the entire planet.”

– The war is unfolding according to “NATO’s eyes and brains. The Ukronazis are nothing but free controlled zombies. And the Ukrainian army is a remotely controlled zombie organism.”

– “The tactics and strategy of this war will be the subject of textbooks for military academies around the world. Once again: the Russian army is smashing a Nazi zombie organism, fully integrated with the eyes and brain of NATO.”

Now let’s switch to Oleg Makarenko, who focuses on the Big Picture.

– “The West considers itself ‘the whole world’ only because it has not yet received a sufficiently sensitive punch on the nose. It just so happened that Russia is now giving him this click: with the rear support of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And the West can do absolutely nothing with us, since it also lags behind us in terms of the number of nuclear warheads.”

– “Europe has chosen its fate. And chose fate for Russia. What you are seeing now is the death of Europe. Even if it does not come to nuclear strikes on industrial centers, Europe is doomed. In a situation where European industry is left without cheap Russian energy sources and raw materials – and China will begin to receive these same energy carriers and raw materials at a discount, there can be no talk of any real competition with China from Europe. As a result, literally everything will collapse there – after industry, agriculture will collapse, welfare and social security will collapse, hunger, banditry and chaos will begin.”

It’s fair to consider Reshetnikov and Makarenko as faithfully representing the overall Russian sentiment, which interprets the crude Bucha false flag as a cover to obscure the Ukrainian army torture of Russian POWs.

And, deeper still, Bucha allowed the disappearance of Pentagon bioweapon labs from the Western mediasphere, complete with its ramifications: evidence of a concerted American drive to ultimately deploy real weapons of mass destruction against Russia.

The multi-level Bucha hoax had to include the Brit presidency of the UN Security Council actually blocking a serious discussion, a day before the Russian Ministry of Defense struggled to present to the UN – predictably minus the U.S. and the UK – all the bioweapon facts they have unearthed in Ukraine. The Chinese were horrified by the findings.

The Russian Investigative Committee at least persists in its work, with 100 researchers unearthing evidence of war crimes across Donbass to be presented at a tribunal in the near future, most probably set up in Donetsk.

And that brings us back to the facts on the ground. There’s a lot of analytical discussion on the possible endgame of Operation Z. A fair assessment would include the liberation of all of Novorossiya and total control of the Black Sea coastline that currently is part of Ukraine.

“Ukraine” in fact was never a state; it was always an annex to another state or empire such as Poland, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and crucially Russia.

The landmark Russian state was Kievan Rus. “Ukraine”, in old Russian, means “border region”. In the past, it referred to the westernmost regions of the Russian Empire. When the Empire started expanding south, the new regions annexed mostly from Turkish rule were called Novorossiya (“New Russia”) and the northeastern regions, Malorossiya (“Little Russia”).

It was up to the USSR in the early 1920s to jumble it all together and name it “Ukraine” – adding Galicia in the west, which was historically non-Russian.

Yet the key development is when the USSR broke up in 1991. As the Empire of Lies de facto controlled post-Soviet Russia, they could never have possibly allowed the real Russian regions of the USSR – that is, Novorossiya and Malorossiya – to be again incorporated to the Russian Federation.

Russia is now re-incorporating them – in an “I Did It, My Way” manner.

Vamos a bailar in European Puerto Rico

By now it’s also quite clear to any serious geopolitical analysis that Operation Z opened a Pandora’s box. And the supreme historical victim of all the toxicity finally let loose is bound to be Europe.

The indispensable Michael Hudson, in a new essay on the U.S. dollar devouring the euro, argues half in jest that Europe might as well surrender its currency, and go on like “a somewhat larger version of Puerto Rico.”

After all, Europe “has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – ‘flag of convenience’ offshore banking centers that are not real ‘states’ because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar.”

In synch with quite a few Russian, Chinese and Iranian analysts, Hudson advances that the war in Ukraine – actually in its “full-blown version as the New Cold War” – is likely to last “at least a decade, perhaps two as the U.S. extends the fight between neoliberalism and socialism [meaning the Chinese system] to encompass a worldwide conflict.”

What may be seriously in dispute is whether the U.S., after “the economic conquest of Europe”, will be able to “lock in African, South American and Asian countries”. The Eurasia integration process, rolling in earnest for 10 years now, conducted by the Russia-China strategic partnership and expanding to most of the Global South, will go no holds barred to prevent it.

There’s no question, as Hudson states, that “the world economy is being enflamed” – with the U.S. weaponizing trade. Yet on the Right Side of History we have the Rublegas, the petroyuan, the new monetary/financial system being designed in a partnership between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China.

And that’s something no puny Cancel Culture War can erase.

The Biggest Bang.

China is starting to pay for Russian oil and coal in yuan.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 8, 2022

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got the Martyanov swing. https://t.co/ySWLBOcy1K

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 8, 2022

"Julian Assange is a victim of torture and inhuman treatment. This is a threat not just to Assange himself but to freedom of speech everywhere in the world. Nils Melzer’s book is the essential, utterly forensic analysis of this case" @VersoBooks https://t.co/oKvEq3hwAb pic.twitter.com/XSJIRn6xXQ

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 8, 2022

Here you have:

– Zoltan Poszar's analysis.

– a Valdai discussion on the REAL gas issues for Europe.

– an old school Deep State pro telling it like it is.

Yep, I take NO prisoners.

Sit back and watch Europe commit suicide https://t.co/cejE6L9aNc

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

'Sit back and watch Europe commit suicide,' suggests @RealPepeEscobar. If the US goal is to crush Russia's economy with sanctions and isolation, why is Europe in an economic free fall instead?https://t.co/LM9dDENWGN via @TheCradleMedia

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) April 7, 2022

If the #US goal is to crush Russia's economy with sanctions and isolation, why is Europe in an economic free fall instead while Moscow enjoys a record budget surplus?https://t.co/dAoL9zMbsK

— The Eurasianist ☦️ (@Russ_Warrior) April 7, 2022

And here's the Wall of Shame.

The Empire of Resentful Cowards and Liars, who's starving millions of Afghans to death and weaponizing the genocide in Yemen, got the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. pic.twitter.com/Db20bdC25g

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

Neither Russia nor China ever subscribed to the concept of “rules-based world order”. Unlike the West, they are not allergic to international law (as opposed to vague or even unknown “rules”) as the sound basis of international relations. https://t.co/42flmGWof2

— Mikhail Ulyanov (@Amb_Ulyanov) April 7, 2022

Pentagon honcho Lloyd "Raytheon" Austin has been calling Shoigu non-stop since mid-February.

No one picks up the phone.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

The Russian Investigative Committee has 100 researchers working full-time, amassing evidence of UkroNazi war crimes across the Donetsk People's Republic.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

The ruble continues its reverse search and destroy mission. https://t.co/a2eoyzO6fi

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

Kerch Strait has reopened to shipping.

Russian wheat exports will soon restart.

Kerch was previously closed to prevent 404 attacks on the bridge.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

NEVER underestimate Stupidistan's stupidity. Especially when they deploy imperial "intel".

h/t MoA pic.twitter.com/m1776Y0kej

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 7, 2022

Draghi: "dovete decidere tra la pace o i caloriferi caldi, tra la pace e i condizionatori accesi".

Bel tentativo, ma no grazie.

La scelta che ci imponete è tra nutrire la guerra in Ucraina o nutrire l'economia in Europa.

E solo uno psicopatico avrebbe dubbi.

— Andrea Zhok (@AndreaZhok) April 6, 2022

Looks like someone gave a copy of Eurasia For Dummies to Generalito Milley:

"We are now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules-based current global order."

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 6, 2022

Sellers of satellite images refuse to do business with Russian buyers.

And across NATOstan they only sell to the big news agencies.

That's how a Total Information Blockade works.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 6, 2022

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— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 6, 2022

Russia, China, Iran and Turkey expressed their solidarity with Pakistan PM Imran Khan against a "foreign conspiracy" engineered by you know who.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 6, 2022

Dear @TwitterSupport I am not “Russian State Affiliated media”. I work for NO #Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.

— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) April 6, 2022

According to the State Stupidity Department, sanctioning Putin's daughters and Lavrov's daughter is "in our national interest."

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) April 6, 2022

Sit back and watch Europe commit suicide

If the US goal is to crush Russia’s economy with sanctions and isolation, why is Europe in an economic free fall instead?

April 07, 2022

Washington’s competition with rising power Russia is so fierce, it is willing to sacrifice Europe.Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Pepe Escobar

The stunning spectacle of the EU committing slow motion hara-kiri is something for the ages. Like a cheap Kurosawa remake the movie is actually about the Empire of Lies-detonated demolition of the EU, complete with subsequent rerouting of some key Russian commodities exports to the US at the expense of the Europeans.

It helps to have a 5^th columnist actress strategically placed – in this case astonishingly incompetent European Commission head Ursula von der Lugen – with her vociferous announcement of a crushing new sanctions package: Russian ships banned from EU ports; road transportation companies from Russia and Belarus prohibited from entering the EU; no more coal imports (over 4.4 billion euros a year).

In practice, that translates into Washington shaking down its wealthiest western clients/puppets. Russia, of course, is too powerful to directly challenge militarily, and the US badly needs some of its key exports, especially minerals. So, the Americans will instead nudge the EU into imposing ever-increasing sanctions that will willfully collapse their national economies, while allowing the US to scoop everything up.

Cue to the coming catastrophic economic consequences felt by Europeans in their daily life (but not by the wealthiest five percent): inflation devouring salaries and savings; next winter energy bills packing a mean punch; products disappearing from supermarkets; holiday bookings almost frozen. France’s Le Petit Roi Emmanuel Macron – perhaps facing a nasty electoral surprise – has even announced: “food stamps like in WWII are possible.”

We have Germany facing the returning ghost of Weimar hyperinflation. BlackRock President Rob Kapito said, in Texas,“for the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want.” African farmers are unable to afford fertilizer at all this year, reducing agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding 100 million people.

Zoltan Poszar, former NY Fed and US Treasury guru, current Credit Suisse grand vizir, has been on a streak, stressing how commodity reserves – and, here, Russia is unrivaled – will be an essential feature of what he calls Bretton Woods III (although, what’s being designed by Russia, China, Iran and the Eurasia Economic Union is a post-Bretton Woods).

Poszar remarks that wars, historically, are won by those who have more food and energy supplies, in the past to power horses and soldiers; today to feed soldiers and fuel tanks and fighter jets. China, incidentally, has amassed large stocks of virtually everything.

Poszar notes how our current Bretton Woods II system has a deflationary impulse (globalization, open trade, just-in-time supply chains) while Bretton Woods 3 will provide an inflationary impulse (de-globalization, autarky, hoarding of raw materials) of supply chains and extra military spending to be able to protect what will remain of seaborne trade.

The implications are of course overwhelming. What’s implicit, ominously, is that this state of affairs may even lead to WWIII.

Rublegas or American LNG?

The Russian roundtable Valdai Club has conducted an essential expert discussion on what we at The Cradle have defined as  Rublegas – the real geoeconomic game-changer at the heart of the post-petrodollar era. Alexander Losev, a member of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, offered the contours of the Big Picture. But it was up to Alexey Gromov, Chief Energy Director of the Institute of Energy and Finance, to come up with crucial nitty-gritty.

Russia, so far, was selling 155 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe each year. The EU rhetorically promises to get rid of it by 2027, and reduce supply by the end of 2022 by 100 billion cubic meters. Gromov asked “how,” and remarked, “any expert has no answer. Most of Russia’s natural gas is shipped over pipelines. This cannot simply be replaced by Liquified Natural Gas (LNG).”

The risible European answer has been “start saving,” as in “prepare to be worse off” and “reduce the temperature in households.” Gromov noted how, in Russia, “22 to 25 degrees in winter is the norm. Europe is promoting 16 degrees as ‘healthy’, and wearing sweaters at night.”

The EU won’t be able to get the gas it needs from Norway or Algeria (which is privileging domestic consumption). Azerbaijan would be able to provide at best 10 billion cubic meters a year, but “that will take 2 or 3 years” to happen.

Gromov stressed how “there’s no surplus in the market today for US and Qatar LNG,” and how prices for Asian customers are always higher. The bottom line is that “by the end of 2022, Europe won’t be able to significantly reduce” what it buys from Russia: “they might cut by 50 billion cubic meters, maximum.” And prices in the spot market will be higher – at least $1,300 per cubic meter.

An important development is that “Russia changed the logistical supply chains to Asia already.” That applies for gas and oil as well:  “You can impose sanctions if there’s a surplus in the market. Now there’s a shortage of at least 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. We’ll be sending our supplies to Asia – with a discount.” As it stands, Asia is already paying a premium, from 3 to 5 dollars more per barrel of oil.

On oil shipments, Gromov also commented on the key issue of insurance: “Insurance premiums are higher. Before Ukraine, it was all based on the Free on Board (FOB) system. Now buyers are saying ‘we don’t want to take the risk of taking your cargo to our ports.’ So they are applying the Cost, Insurance and Freight (CIF) system, where the seller has to insure and transport the cargo. That of course impacts revenues.”

An absolutely key issue for Russia is how to make the transition to China as its key gas customer. It’s all about the Power of Siberia 2, a new 2600-km pipeline originating in the Russian Bovanenkovo and Kharasavey gas fields in Yamal, in northwest Siberia – which will reach full capacity only in 2024. And, first, the interconnector through Mongolia must be built – “we need 3 years to build this pipeline” – so everything will be in place only around 2025.

On the Yamal pipeline, “most of the gas goes to Asia. If the Europeans don’t buy anymore we can redirect.” And then there’s the Arctic LNG 2 project – which is even larger than Yamal: “the first phase should be finished soon, it’s 80 percent ready.” An extra problem may be posed by the Russian “Unfriendlies” in Asia: Japan and South Korea. LNG infrastructure produced in Russia still depends on foreign technologies.

That’s what leads Gromov to note that, “the model of mobilization-based economy is not so good.” But that’s what Russia needs to deal with at least in the short to medium term.

The positives are that the new paradigm will allow “more cooperation within the BRICS (the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that have been meeting annually since 2009);” the expansion of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC); and more interaction and integration with “Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Iran.”

Only in terms of Iran and Russia, swaps in the Caspian Sea are already in the works, as Iran produces more than it needs, and is set to increase cooperation with Russia in the framework of their strengthened strategic partnership.

Hypersonic geoeconomics

It was up to Chinese energy expert Fu Chengyu to offer a concise explanation of why the EU drive of replacing Russian gas with American LNG is, well, a pipe dream. Essentially the US offer is “too limited and too costly.”

Fu Chengyu showed how a lengthy, tricky process depends on four contracts: between the gas developer and the LNG company; between the LNG company and the buyer company; between the LNG buyer and the cargo company (which builds vessels); and between the buyer and the end user.

“Each contract,” he pointed out, “takes a long time to finish. Without all these signed contracts, no party will invest – be it investment on infrastructure or gas field development.” So actual delivery of American LNG to Europe assumes all these interconnected resources are available – and moving like clockwork.

Fu Chengyu’s verdict is stark: this EU obsession on ditching Russian gas will provoke “an impact on global economic growth, and recession. They are pushing their own people – and the world. In the energy sector, we will all be harmed.”

It was quite enlightening to juxtapose the coming geoeconomic turbulence – the EU obsession in bypassing Russian gas and the onset of Rublegas – with the real reasons behind Operation Z in Ukraine, completely obscured by western media and analysts.

A US Deep State old pro, now retired, and quite familiar with the inner workings of the old OSS, the CIA precursor, all the way to the neocon dementia of today, provided some sobering insights:

“The whole Ukraine issue is over hypersonic missiles that can reach Moscow in less than four minutes. The US wants them there, in Poland, Romania, Baltic States, Sweden, Finland. This is in direct violation of the agreements in 1991 that NATO will not expand in Eastern Europe. The US does not have hypersonic missiles now but should – in a year or two. This is an existential threat to Russia. So they had to go into the Ukraine to stop this.  Next will be Poland and Romania where launchers have been built in Romania and are being built in Poland.”

From a completely different geopolitical perspective, what’s really telling is that his analysis happens to dovetail with Zoltan Poszar’s geoeconomics: “The US and NATO are totally belligerent. This presents a real danger to Russia. The idea that nuclear war is unthinkable is a myth. If you look at the firebombing of Tokyo against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more people died in Tokyo than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These cities were rebuilt. The radiation goes away and life can restart. The difference between firebombing and nuclear bombing is only efficiency. NATO provocations are so extreme, Russia had to place their nuclear missiles on standby alert. This is a gravely serious matter. But the US ignored it.”

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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