Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference in the garden at Chequers, in Aylesbury, England, on May 15, 2023 (AP)
By Al Mayadeen English
Russian troops successfully gained control over Bakhmut, and Zelensky acknowledges its loss.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emerged on Sunday to acknowledge Bakhmut’s defeat to the Russians, saying there was “nothing left” of the city.
When asked if Ukrainian soldiers were still holding out or if Russia had taken the city, Zelensky was evasive, saying only, “You have to understand there is nothing” there.
“For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts.”
Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik that the Russian forces’ control over the important transport hub of Bakhmut on May 20 marks a critical turning point in the battle between Kiev and Moscow.
The liberation of Bakhmut demonstrates that Ukraine’s political leadership’s approach has failed, because what happened there will be directly blamed on Zelensky and his remaining cadre, Kwiatkowski said.
Russia’s victory in Bakhmut is significant “practically and symbolically,” she said. “In practical and strategic terms, control of the city in its entirety allows the start of rebuilding and normalization there for the people of the city, and real hope for the end of the [Bakhmut] “meat-grinder.” While Ukrainian forces may still attack the city from the west and north, the decision on who holds the city is in practical terms already decided, the former analyst for the US Department of Defense said.
For months, the besieged city of Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) had been the hub of warfare between Russia and Ukraine. The hard-fought city was finally seized on May 20 by assault units of the Wagner Group private military company (PMC) and the Russian armed forces.
The fact that Russian troops proved to be highly successful in expelling the Ukrainian armed forces from Bakhmut points to a “decisive change along the dividing line between Ukraine and Russia”, Kwiatkowski explained.
The timing is critical in this case, since it occurred during or before the “anticipated” Ukrainian counteroffensive, she added. “Just as the Wagner Group returns east for rest and recuperation, the Ukrainian Army, both soldiers, and leadership, should be similarly returning “home” to rest and regroup. Clearly, the Ukrainian strategy to hold ever tinier portions of the city at a huge and disproportionate cost to its remaining military has failed,” Kwiatkowski said.
The fall of Bakhmut by Ukraine may also put a dent in the West’s thus far unwavering willingness to supply arms to Ukraine. “The decision in the West, in DC and Kiev, will need to be made – escalation into a direct NATO-Russia war, which will cost everyone and lead to catastrophe, or to cut losses, and settle the conflict so that the West can stop bleeding money and armaments, and start buying up the western part of Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski emphasized.
According to the analyst, Zelensky is increasingly behaving “as if he does not understand the reality of the situation.” “He acts like this loss will not be blamed by Ukrainians on his “leadership” and capabilities to deliver on his many promises. At best, he faces a blow to his credibility at home, and at worst he may not be able to return to Kiev safely from his current, and since the war started rare, overseas travel.”
As for the so-called collective West, it may use the liberation of Bakhmut as a sign that it is “time to settle,” Kwiatkowski said.
“With the complete fall of [Bakhmut], Zelensky’s usefulness to the West, and to his own people, has suddenly become very limited,” the Retired officer concluded.
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The commander of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, with Russian soldiers and private military contractors in Bakhmut, May 20, 2023 (Screengrab from social media)
The commander of the Wagner Private Military Company reports that Bakhmut has fallen into the hands of the Russian Armed Forces.
The Russian Armed Forces have gained full control over the city of Bakhmut, also known as Artyomvsk, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group private military company said Saturday.
Prigozhin announced the affair in a video in which he appeared in combat fatigues in front of a line of fighters sporting Russian flags and Wagner banners.
“Today, at 12 noon, Bakhmut was completely taken,” Prigozhin proclaimed. “We completely took the whole city, from house to house.”
This comes after media reports said Prigozhin was prepared to share data regarding the position of Russian troops with Ukraine, which Russia dismissed as fake news.
Ukrainian-Russian war. Day 450: After nine months of combats #RussianArmy took full control over the city of Bakhmut/Artemivsk. Now the city is under the control of Donetsk Popular Republic. Map: [ https://t.co/nDaA4xE2dx ] pic.twitter.com/FKSrvFmUy3
The Washington Post reported Sunday that US intelligence documents said Prigozhin offered Ukraine in late January to share sensitive information regarding the Russian armed forces, namely the positions of Russian troops, in exchange for Kiev withdrawing its soldiers from the area around the city of Bakhmut.
Prigozhin announced in a Telegram video that his forces will be withdrawing from Bakhmut City in Donbas on May 10, stating that the reason for this measure is that his units have been suffering significant losses due to a lack of artillery munitions and that they will be retreating to the rear camps to “lick their wounds.”
Bakhmut, situated north of Donetsk, holds strategic significance for the course of the war. The city had long been the transportation route of food and supplies for the Ukrainian troops stationed in Donbass.
Moreover, reports that came out earlier in the month said Prigozhin requested that Moscow allow him to hand his forces’ positions in Bakhmut to the Akhmat battalion led by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
The Chechen commander said that if Wagner leaves Bakhmut then the “[Russian] General Staff will lose an experienced combat unit,” however, the Akhmat battalion is ready to replace the paramilitary group and “advance and take the city.”
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The Group of Seven held a de facto war summit in Hiroshima, a place that is synonymous with the horror and evil of war.
The United States-led “Group of Seven” cabal held one of their increasingly meaningless jamborees this weekend in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The posturing of solemnity by these warmongering elites in a place that represents the ultimate barbarity of American imperialism is not only sickening in its hypocrisy and profanity. The evident lack of awareness and shame of these charlatans is a sure sign that their privileged historical charade is coming to an end.
American President Joe Biden took time out from his nation’s collapsing economy and scandals over his rampant family corruption to attend the G7 summit in Japan. He was joined by so-called leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada as well as the premier of the host nation, Fumio Kishida. Joining the lackeys was the European Union’s chief ventriloquist doll, Ursula von der Leyen, and Ukrainian comedian-turned-arms-dealer, aka “president”, Vladimir Zelensky.
The proceedings began with a cynical and disingenuous “dedication” at the Hiroshima Peace Park whose centerpiece is the Genbaku Dome, the iconic spectral ruin caused by the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945. The very gathering of leaders at this sacred place is the same people who are criminally pushing the world toward another conflagration.
Biden and his cronies soon dispensed with hollow talk about “peace” and “nuclear disarmament” to make the G7 summit a rallying call for more hostility toward Russia and China. There were plans for more economic warfare (sanctions) against Moscow, which was vilified as usual for “unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine. There were pledges of supplying more weapons to the powder keg that the U.S. and its NATO partners have created in Ukraine. There were high-handed dismissals of international diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict, which have been proposed by China, and Latin American and African nations.
The U.S.-led G7 camarilla also made their hate fest a forum for drumming up more hostility toward China, accusing Beijing of building up nuclear arms and threatening the world.
In short, the Group of Seven held a de facto war summit in Hiroshima, a place that is synonymous with the horror and evil of war.
Seventy-eight years ago, on the morning of August 6, 1945, at 8.15 am, the US Air Force Enola Gay B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb on the city. The resulting death toll would be 140,000, mainly civilians, many of them instantly incinerated, others dying from horrendous burns and radiation poisoning. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.
History has shown that there was no military need to use such weapons of mass destruction. Official American reasoning ostensibly about hastening the end of the Pacific War can now be seen as a flagrant lie. The bombs were deliberately used by the United States in a demonstration of state terrorism especially directed at its wartime ally, the Soviet Union. Arguably, these grotesque genocidal crimes sealed the beginning of the Cold War. This horrific demarcation was how the U.S.-led Western imperialist system would try to control the postwar world.
The same deplorable and criminal Cold War mentality persists among the U.S. rulers and their Western minions. Washington needs wars and conflict to maintain its untenable hegemonic ambitions along with its Western satraps who are equally complicit. The barbarous power structure can only be sustained by “ideological projections” designating “enemies” and “threats” that, in turn, provide cover for the otherwise unacceptable barbarism and warmongering. The Soviet Union was the “enemy”, then it became “Islamic terrorists”, and now it’s Russia and China.
The ideological projection also casts a narcissistic image of America and its Western allies as benevolent, peace-loving, democratic, law-abiding, and so on. It’s an almost incredible feat of global gaslighting and inversion of reality; made possible largely by mass disinformation via the Western corporate media/propaganda system. Thankfully, that charade is becoming threadbare too.
One indicator this week was a study by the respected Brown University’s Cost of War project which estimated the number killed just over the past two decades from U.S.-led wars at 4.5 million. All told, since the end of World War Two estimates of deaths from American wars of aggression around the world are in the order of 20-30 million. No other nation in history comes close to the destructiveness of U.S. power, which laughably declares itself the “leader of the free world”, the “democratic upholder of rules-based order”.
The United States has devolved into a monstrous imperialist rogue state that is addicted to war, conflict, mass killing and even threats of annihilation in order to prop up its corporate capitalist economy. Its accumulated record $31 trillion of national debt speaks of the chronic disease and its moribund dollar lifeline.
Yet, Washington’s ideological pretensions – sustained and promulgated by a subservient corporate media/propaganda system – have the absurd audacity to paint Russia, China and other nations as “threats” to international peace.
The war in Ukraine has been at least nine years in the making. Even NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg brazenly admits the preparation for war against Russia since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. The war is playing out now in a way that vividly manifests the psychopathic logic of the U.S. rulers and their Western lackeys. Britain has emerged as Uncle Sam’s righthand henchman for provoking escalation, the latest provocation to Russia being the supply of long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles capable of striking Crimea. Already, Russian civilians have been casualties from these British munitions. This is like Part Two of the slaughter-fest madness of Britain’s Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea War (1853-56). Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is another contemptible diversity cut-out figure. Dweebs like him, Biden, Scholz, Trudeau, Macron, Meloni and Von der Leyen should be marched off to the dock for war crimes.
The relentless logic of war compelled by American hegemonic ambitions means that the world is being pushed to the brink of world war again. The same imperialist tendencies that created two previous world wars are reaching fever-pitch again.
Hiroshima is an obscene reminder of war and in particular U.S.-led war. It is truly disturbing that an American president and his Western elite flunkies were paying homage to victims of an atomic holocaust while at the same insanely making plans for intensifying aggression toward Russia and China.
The arrogant American rulers have never even offered an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, they persist in claiming righteousness. Biden over the weekend added insult to travesty when he declared that Japan would be offered “protection” from America’s “nuclear umbrella” against alleged Chinese expansionism. This was stated by the leader of a nation that is ringing China with military bases, missile systems, naval firepower and nuclear-capable bombers. Japan’s abject premier Fumio Kishida actually thanked Biden and declared that the U.S. was a force for peace in the world.
In any case, the G7 is becoming a global irrelevance. It is a relic of former American imperial might. The “rich club” used to command half of the world’s economy, it is now down to 30 per cent and falling. The emerging multipolar world led by China, Russia, the Global South and many others, the BRICS, ASEAN, ALBA, EEA, SCO, are all testimony to the waning American Empire and its rapidly declining dollar dominance. The G7 doesn’t even make any pretence about helping the global economy and development. It has become a bellicose vehicle emitting desperate warmongering by a crumbling hegemonic system.
Only in the fairytale realm of Western media/propaganda could such a vile charade at Hiroshima be projected. To the rest of the world, it is utterly sickening.
The China-brokered Iran-Saudi deal marked a significant shift toward establishing Persian Gulf and regional stability, but is a major setback for Israelis who have cultivated Arab-Iranian divisions for years.
The recent rapprochement between regional arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran has added a new layer to the already complicated geopolitical landscape in West Asia, especially as the kingdom was once touted to be the next major Arab state to normalize relations with Israel.
Signed in March, the Chinese-brokered agreement, which reestablishes diplomatic relations and reopens embassies in Riyadh and Tehran after a seven-year hiatus, is seen by many as a watershed moment that could potentially reduce bilateral animosity and ease tensions throughout the region.
However, the deal has caused great dismay in Tel Aviv and caught Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu off guard.
It is understandable why Israel is disappointed, as the prioritization of the Abraham Accords has been a cornerstone of Israeli foreign policy in recent years. The accords, initially involving Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain in 2021, was a major foreign policy victory for Netanyahu and part of a broader strategy to isolate Iran in the region.
And normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, the most influential Arab state today, would have solidified Israel’s ambition to establish diplomatic ties with its Arab neighbors and further enhance its diplomatic influence in West Asia.
Regional stability: A setback for Israel
Consequently, the Saudi-Iran deal is viewed by many observers as a setback to Israel’s ambitions, with some analysts even perceiving it as a diplomatic victory for the Iranians. Importantly, Riyadh’s resumption of diplomatic ties with Tehran has shifted perceptions across the Arab region, creating conditions that make the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords less likely than ever.
Equally, the resetting of relations does not necessarily mean that Iran and Saudi Arabia are putting their differences aside. As Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh of the Middle East Studies Forum at Deakin University, explains to The Cradle, “It does mean that both countries realize that escalation of tensions and the prospects of all-out conflict would be detrimental for both.”
He emphasizes that “diplomatic ties ensure viable lines of communication to ensure the cold war between the two remains on ice.”
Matteo Colombo, a researcher at Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit, concurs, saying that a major indirect consequence of the shift in the Saudi-Iranian relationship is that regional conflicts are likely to become less violent than in previous years.
Uncertain impact on Saudi-Israeli ties
The impact of the Saudi-Iran detente on Saudi-Israeli ties remains uncertain. Russell Lucas, a professor of international relations and domestic politics and culture of the Middle East at the University of Michigan, believes that while Iran-Saudi normalization does not directly impact Saudi-Israeli relations, one should not expect dramatic moves between Tel Aviv and Riyadh who will maintain mostly discreet ties.
Akbarzadeh argues that expecting a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia was always going to be a challenging prospect. He highlights the deep sense of injury among Muslims and Arabs due to Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands:
“How could Saudi Arabia overlook this sense of injustice and join the so-called Abraham Accords? … such a move would have delivered a major setback to Saudi’s self-image projection as the global champion of Islam.”
Dr. Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, views Israel’s friendship with certain Arab states as purely instrumentalist, driven by the need to contain threats such as Iran. “A simple review of Israeli policies clarifies that Israel is among the biggest contributing factors to regional insecurity and tensions,” he tells The Cradle.
Arab reluctance to normalize
In fact, any prospects of further rapprochement between Israel and other Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, are complicated under the current far-right Israeli government. This may lead countries that were previously considering normalizing their relations with Tel Aviv to reevaluate their decisions.
While countries that have already normalized relations with Israel are unlikely to reverse the process, they may “apply the brakes at any time” on their joint initiatives in certain sectors, such as military collaboration.
Both Lucas and Akbarzadeh agree that one of the key effects of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement is the reluctance of Riyadh and other Arab states to be drawn into a confrontation with Iran on behalf of Israel. According to Lucas:
“Public opinion in the [Persian] Gulf registering concern about Israel’s right-wing government’s treatment of the Palestinians and fear of escalation has reached leaders in states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
Therefore, the current developments suggest that Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states now hold more leverage in their negotiations with Israel as a result of Riyadh’s deal with Tehran, giving them more license to shape their future dealings with Tel Aviv.
Saudi intent matters
Not all views are as rosy, however. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a CNBC interview that the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran has very “little to do with Israel,” claiming that Saudi Arabia, “has no illusions about who their adversaries are and who their friends are in [West Asia].”
Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, tells The Cradle that Netanyahu is actually right when he talks about Saudi Arabia’s orientation:
“Riyadh’s foreign policy is much more aligned with Israel while the recent reduction of tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia are to be very temporary – rooted in trying to reduce tensions so that Saudi Arabia can invest in its long term plan of trying to enhance economic development, attract tourists, more foreign investment, and to expand its new policy of modernization under Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS).”
Hashemi thinks that “behind the scenes, the Saudi crown prince and Netanyahu both have similar visions for the future of the Middle East [West Asia] rooted in blocking regional democratization, trying to contain Iran, and influence/expand the Abraham Accords between Israel and various Arab states.”
Furthermore, he predicts that “if Donald Trump or the Republicans take the White House, Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran will go back to the period of 2017 when Saudi Arabia was very much supportive of Trump’s hawkish policy towards Iran.”
Israel’s miscalculation
But Netanyahu’s understanding of the shifting sands in Persian Gulf states – and his claims that Israel is “an indispensable partner for the Arab world in achieving security, prosperity, and peace” – may be oversimplified.
Kamrava, for example, observes that for a long time, Arab and Israeli policies toward Tehran have been guided by the assumption that Iran can be effectively marginalized and excluded from regional security arrangements:
“But the actual experience has shown that such an assumption is indeed incorrect. In fact, efforts to marginalize or exclude Iran only lead to further reactions from Iran. It is for this reason that first the UAE, and now Saudi Arabia, have changed course and have decided to engage with Iran,” he notes.
Tehran, on the other hand, “has consistently shown that it responds positively not to threats but to constructive engagement,” says Kamrava. So, “if a change in Iranian foreign policy is what regional states are after, then talking to Tehran is the best way of achieving that, rather than working to overthrow the entire Islamic Republic system, which is what Israel is advocating,” he explains.
Others concur. Israel would be mistaken to assume that hostility towards Iran is the defining dynamic in the region, as it has been for a significant part of the last decade, argues Matteo Colombo. This, he adds, “makes it more challenging for Tel Aviv to advocate for normalizing diplomatic relations with other countries in the region to contain Iran.”
The China factor
Hashemi offers another hypothesis for Saudi Arabia’s overriding strategy in its rapprochement with Iran. He believes that Riyadh’s latest moves may be viewed as a message to Washington: “Give us what we want in terms of weapon sales and security guarantees and new strategic vision arrangement that Saudi Arabia is demanding from the US for long-term commitments.”
If the US does not provide these guarantees, says Hashemi, “then Saudi Arabia may symbolically break from the US policy and start to engage with some US adversaries, including China.” He notes that these are very short calculations, as the Saudis are still closely engaged with the west.
But the Beijing-brokered Saudi-Iran detente has created great unease in Tel Aviv and Washington, where the deal is viewed as a loss of US diplomatic initiative and influence on the world stage.
While the agreement has received broad international support, generating optimism for its potential impact against the backdrop of rapidly developing multipolarity, uncertainties persist regarding its specific outcomes. There is a lack of information over of tangible incentives and guarantees from China in ensuring the deal’s success – even while there is confidence in the motivations and commitments of the parties involved.
In terms of impartial and honest mediation, China is regarded more favorably than the US due to its positive and established relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its vested interests in maintaining peace and stability in the Persian Gulf, from which it derives much of its energy supplies.
منذ أن أنجز الروس مهمتهم الأساسية في العملية الخاصة في أوكرانيا بتحرير الدونباس بمحافظاته الأربع ذات الأكثرية الروسية، وهم يقاتلون بأسلوب بديع وفريد… إذ يحصرون القتال في مربعات صغيرة، يطوّقونها ويحاصروها ثم يحرّرونها قطعة قطعة، وهم يستدرجون أسلحة وعتاد الناتو الى تلك المربعات ليدفنوها في أرض أوكرانيا بأقلّ الخسائر البشرية وبأقلّ حجم من الأعتدة والأسلحة الثقيلة من طرفهم.
هكذا يعملون منذ أشهر في باخموت (حلب أوكرانيا)، وكذلك يفعلون في سائر المناطق التي يستطلعونها بأنها غاية نهائية لذخيرة وعتاد وأسلحة لدول وجيوش ومرتزقة الناتو.
واحدة من أهمّ العمليات وأخطرها وأدقّها، كانت في مدينة خليمنيتسكي. وتعقيباً على قيام الجيش الروسي أخيراً بتدمير أضخم مستودع ذخيره في أوكرانيا، افاد مصدر خاص بما يلي:
أولا ـ إنّ هذا المستودع، الواقع غرب مدينة خليمينتسكي، يقع ضمن منطقة عسكرية كبيرة جداً وكان يحتوي على ما مجموعه: اثنين وخمسين ألف قذيفة مدفعية، من عيار 155 ملم، تحتوي على مادة اليورانيوم المنضب، قامت الولايات المتحده بتزويد أوكرانيا بها خلال الأشهر الثلاثة الماضية.
ثانيا ـ تمّ قصف هذا المستودع بصواريخ بعيدة المدى وعالية الدقه، مما أدّى الى إزالته عن وجه الأرض تماماً، إضافةً الى منشآت عسكرية أخرى قريبةً منه.
ثالثا ـ يظهر من الفيديوات المرفقة، التي نشرها موقع: ذي وور زون الأميركي المتخصّص بالشؤون العسكرية والأمنية، ان كتلة اللهب والدخان، الناجمة عن انفجار المستودع، قد صعدت بشكل عمودي ثم تحوّلت تدريجياً الى شكل قرص من الفطر، وهو الشكل التقليديّ المعروف للتفجيرات النووية.
رابعاـ كان من المفترض، حسب خطط غرفة عمليات حلف شمال الأطلسي في العاصمة البولندية وارسو، المخصصة لإدارة العمليات العسكرية في أوكرانيا، أن يجري نقل هذه الذخائر لألوية مدفعية الميدان الأوكرانية، المعدّة لتغطية قاطع جبهتي زاباروجيا وخيرسون، حيث كان من المفترض أن يتركز الجهد الأطلسي الرئيسي على هاتين الجبهتين، لمحاولة قطع التواصل البري بين روسيا وشبه جزيرة القرم، وربما عبور القوات الأوكرانية لحدود شبه الجزيره الشمالية والشمالية الشرقية.
خامسا ـ شكلت هذه الضربة الصاروخية الاستراتيجية، ضدّ القدرات التسليحية الأطلسية في أوكرانيا، ضربة قصمت ظهر جنرالات الأطلسي، الذين أشرفوا على عمليات حشد الأسلحة والذخائر والقوات الضرورية، لتنفيذ الهجوم المُشار إليه أعلاه، تحت إشراف غرفة العمليات المذكوره آنفاً إضافة الى غرفة عمليات متقدّمة، مقرّها مدينة لفوف الواقعة غرب أوكرانيا قرب الحدود البولندية وغرفة عمليات ميدانية، مقرّها مدينة نيكولاييڤ، التي لا تبعد عن خطوط الجبهة سوى ما يقارب عشرين كيلومتراً.
سادسا ـ وهذا يعني أنّ الجيش الروسي قد قضى نهائياً والى غير رجعة، على اية احتمالات لتنفيذ الجيش الأوكراني عمليات هجومية، ربما كانت تهدف الى تغيير موازين القوى في الميدان. الأمر الذي يعني حسماً استراتيجياً، لنتيجة المواجهة الروسية مع حلف الأطلسي على ارض أوكرانيا، دون ان تخسر القوات المسلحة الروسية جندياً واحداً او قطعة سلاح واحدة، مع ما يعنيه ذلك من تداعيات على خطط حلفها الأطلسي، بقيادة واشنطن، على الصعيد الاستراتيجي الدولي.
بعدنا طيّبين قولوا الله…
فيديوات ذات صلة
المسائية | حرب روسيا وأوكرانيا إلى مزيد من التصعيد
انتقام بوتين ! تدمير منظومة باتريوت في اوكرانيا بعد خداعها بالصواريخ الروسية واموال اوكرانيا تنفذ
In February 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry discovered the existence of 30 US-funded military biological laboratories in Ukraine.
The work of Western biolaboratories in Ukraine may have been necessary to conceal the development of biological weapons, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, told Sputnik.
Alexander Bastrykin explained that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons stipulates that states parties undertake to take measures to prohibit such weapons within their territory.
However, according to Bastrykin, work in the field of microbiology using bacteria and viruses may have a dual purpose – both the development of medicines and the use of dangerous infections to create components of biological weapons.
For monitoring purposes, parties to the convention have to regularly provide information, such as what laboratories are operating on their territories and what facilities are involved in the research.
“But if one country uses the territories of other states to conduct research, such behavior could be seen as a desire to circumvent existing monitoring procedures and conceal the real aims and results of its activities. As part of the criminal case, the Investigative Committee continues to analyze the available information related to the issue,” Bastrykin said when asked about the possibility of Western countries developing bioweapons in laboratories in Ukraine.
The Russian Security Council on April 12 unanimously approved the report of a parliamentary commission investigating the activities of US biolaboratories in Ukraine, and the document has already been supported by the State Duma.
In February 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry discovered the existence of 30 US-funded military biological laboratories in Ukraine. According to Moscow, Washington has spent over $200 million to develop biological weapons at the facilities. Russia also said that the labs uncovered in Ukraine constituted only a small part of a global network of over 300 similar facilities. The Unites States denies the Russian accusations.
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov slams the US for what he described as “cynical and absurd” statements following an attempt at Putin’s life.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev (TASS)
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov vowed to respond to what he described as “Ukraine’s act of terrorism” in the form of an attempted drone attack on the Kremlin at a time suitable for Russia.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he stated that the US officials’ statements on an attempt at Putin’s life “are striking in their cynicism and absurdity.”
“The U.S. did not find it possible to recognize the obvious thing – it was a terrorist action planned by the Zelensky regime and an assassination attempt targeting the President of the Russian Federation. Moreover, the timing was not chosen by chance – ahead of Victory Day and the May 9 Parade, where foreign guests are planned to take part in,” Antonov added.
“How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol, or the Pentagon? The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for an average citizen: the punishment will be harsh and inevitable,” he said.
“The theses that this act of terrorism was allegedly a “false flag operation” are blasphemous and deceitful. That is, it was Russia itself that staged a provocation against the heart of our statehood?!”
This comes after US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said when asked about the suspected Ukranian drone attack against the Kremlin that he was aware of the reports without ascertaining their legitimacy, noting that he would take any piece of information from Moscow with a “very large shaker of salt.”
“I’ve seen the reports. I can’t in any way validate them. I’d take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt,” Blinken said during an interview for The Washington Post.
The top Russian diplomat further accused the United States of shielding the “Kiev criminals”.
“The statements of high-ranking officials that Kiev can choose how to defend itself are the textbook example of double standards, a policy of encouraging the Zelensky regime to attack the Russian Federation. The words of the bureaucrats about allegedly deterring the Kiev Nazi regime from hitting targets outside its borders are a false farce,” he said.
Antonov acknowledged that Ukraine has no desire to seek peace, warning that the attempt at Putin’s life will be put into account “while working out our strategy to implement the goals and objectives of the special military operation.”
On his part, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, called for the elimination of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “and his clique” following the attempt at Putin’s life.
“After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left other than the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “is not even needed for signing an instrument of unconditional surrender; Hitler, as is known, did not sign it either. There will always be some substitute,” Medvedev stressed.
This comes just one day after the press service of the Kremlin said that two UAVs attempted to target the Kremlin residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin,” the statement said.
The Kremlin stated that Putin was left unharmed by the attack and that Russia reserves the right to initiate retaliation against Kiev’s attempt to strike at the Kremlin.
“As a result of this terrorist act, the President of the Russian Federation was not injured. The schedule of his work has not changed, it continues as usual,” the statement said.
“The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit,” it added.
The Kremlin further stated that it considered the attempted drone attack on the presidential palace as a planned terrorist act and an attempted assassination against Putin.
“We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the Russian president, carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned,” the statement read.
Moscow will be ready to respond to Kiev’s attempt to carry out a drone attack on the Kremlin whenever and wherever it sees fit, the Russian presidential press service said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures whenever and wherever it sees fit,” the statement reads.
According to the statement, “last night, the Kiev regime attempted to attack the Russian president’s Kremlin residence using unmanned aerial vehicles.”
The Kremlin noted that it was “a pre-planned act of terrorism and an attempt on the life of the Russian president, which took place just before the Victory Day and the May 9 Parade that will be attended by foreign guests.”
The following video shows the moment of the drone attack:
State Duma Speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the US and the EU by providing financial and military assistance to the Zelensky regime, become sponsors and accomplices of nuclear terrorism.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was not harmed in an overnight drone strike on the Kremlin, his press service announced on Wednesday.
“As a result of this terrorist act, the President of the Russian Federation was not injured. His work schedule has not changed, it continues as usual,” the message said.
Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained that the head of state was not in the Kremlin during what he described as a Ukrainian UAV attack on Tuesday night. He noted that President Putin is currently working from his residence near Moscow.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses during an exclusive interview with Al Mayadeen the numerous developments taking place in the region and in the international arena.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during an exclusive interview for Al Mayadeen with the network’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ghassan Ben Jeddou, May 2, 2023
Private Dialogue | With Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi revealed new details regarding the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran during an exclusive interview with Al Mayadeen that aired on Tuesday. Raisi also delved into various topics including Iran’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, ties to Syria, and Israeli threats.
During the interview, President Raisi underlined that Iran’s power and advancement have become a benchmark for other countries in the Global South that aim to fight global imperialist powers, in particular the United States, adding that despite the West’s decades-long inhumane sanctions and siege, the latest of which is the maximum pressure campaign imposed by the administration of former US President Donald Trump and continued by his successor President Joe Biden, the Islamic Republic continued its steady and remarkable growth and has deepened and developed its relations with international countries.
Raisi stressed that the Iranian nation has reached a conviction that they can manage their own affairs independently, and not rely on foreigners.
The Iranian President said that the wise leadership and strong guidance of the late Imam Khomeini, and now Iran’s leader Sayyed Khamenei, are the main element that established Iran’s power, security, and system.
To further emphasize the matter, Raisi stated that today the enemies are targeting the country’s foundations and its success, such as the faith of the Iranian people, their confidence to rely on themselves, and the guidance of the jurist – the pillar of the Islamic revolution.
The President emphasized that the Iranian people are the source of the country’s strength and that is the reason that enemies can’t commit any foolishness.
Raisi recalled the popular events commemorating the victory of the Islamic Revolution and International Al-Quds Day. The Iranian people covered the streets nationwide to take part in commemorating this event, he added.
Iran believes that the expertise accumulated by the Islamic Republic can be set as an example for other nations.
Iran-Saudi rapprochement behind the scenes
President Raisi announced that since he took office, his government’s policy is to prioritize establishing friendly ties with neighboring countries and developing bilateral relations in several areas, including the political, economic, cultural, and social fields.
Touching upon this matter, he stressed that religion, culture, and history are shared with the brotherly neighbors of Iran, including West Asia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, especially Islamic countries.
Raisi also revealed some details regarding the events that led to the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh.
There were preliminary security negotiations with Saudi Arabia in Baghdad that were initiated under the previous government, he said.
“During my visit to Beijing, the Chinese President [Xi Jinping] said that during his earlier visit to Saudi Arabia, he had reached a proposal,” and suggested that Iran and Saudi Arabia resume relations, Iran’s President stated.
Raisi said that he, at that time, expressed readiness to re-establish relations with Riyadh and that the initial steps toward Xi’s proposal were taken while he was in Beijing.
Xi in return told Raisi during the meeting that the Saudi leadership expressed their desire to restore relations with Iran and that he [Xi] will follow up on the mediation.
Remarking on Beijing’s mediating role, Raisi noted that some countries may not have wanted China to be the mediator, but Tehran regarded it in a positive manner.
“It was decided that a person be appointed by the Saudi government and that we send a representative and a delegation on our behalf for the bilateral dialogue between the two countries,” Raisi said.
“The King of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia sent their National Security Adviser, and we also decided to send the Secretary of the National Security Council, and it was decided that they discuss issues of concern to the two countries, and it was also decided that political relations between the two countries would resume ties,” and this process will continue and further communication will be established, he confirmed.
Raisi continued that Iran and Saudi Arabia are two major countries in West Asia, and the two countries have an important and influential political and social impact in the region.
The relations between the two countries can bear many benefits for the region, the President said.
“Therefore, we welcomed the restoration of these relations, and certainly the relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the rest of the Islamic countries, would help to exchange expertise between countries of the region.”
According to Raisi, the main and most important point [of restoring ties with Saudis] is that the nations of the region and of the Islamic world felt relieved by these relations and welcomed them, while the enemies were frustrated, including the Zionist entity that revealed its rage caused by the event.
The Zionists seek division between Islamic countries, while Iran believes that strategic unity is essential, he noted, adding that “Israel’s” strategy is to divide and conquer and to sow division, while the strategy of the Islamic Republic is one of unity and harmony.
“In my first speech after taking office, I declared frankly that we can negotiate with Saudi Arabia, and we are ready to resume the work of diplomatic missions in the two countries,” and to sit down with Saudis to resolve issues, he noted.
Raisi stressed that Iran believes that countries must make their own decisions and decide their own fates, and they must prevent any outside power from imposing its will on their political policies.
“For example, Lebanon and the Lebanese must decide [on how to solve their own issues]. We believe that foreign intervention in Lebanon is what causes problems in the country,” he said, stressing that “if the Lebanese decide, as well as the Yemenis, if they decide their own fate, and were able to carry out internal dialogues, then they can solve their problems.”
Foreign interference in countries only leads to creating problems and does not solve any problem, Raisi added.
New world order favors Resistance
Commenting on the Israeli occupation’s recent threats against Iran, the Iranian President assured that “the Zionist entity cannot compete with the Palestinian youth, and it cannot conquer Gaza, and it cannot challenge the West Bank,” adding that Israelis are also unable to provide security to their internal front.
“The circumstances today have greatly changed,” he underscored.
It has become apparent today that no treaties or normalization agreements can protect this entity, and that the rules of confrontation cannot be determined through political forums. Instead, it is the Palestinian Resistance that creates the conditions and it is they that hold the power to decide.
“The Zionist entity, whether in the thirty-three days war [July war on Lebanon] or in the twenty-two days war and the eleven-day war, faced a catastrophic failure, so how does this entity want to confront and attack the center of power and pride in the region, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and confront a nation that is present on the battlefronts with this might?”
The entity knows very well that it and its threats are mere lip service, Riaisi added.
Addressing the Arab nations, he advised people to listen to a comprehensive analysis made by Iranian leader Sayyed Khamenei earlier during the holy month of Ramadan, which concluded that the world is pivoting in the opposite direction to unipolarity and toward a new order.
“Today, the circumstances are pivoting in favor of the Resistance and against the Zionist entity,” said Raisi.
“Day after day, the Zionist entity is heading toward its demise,” the political and social situation within “Israel” is unprecedented, he added.
The demise of the entity and its protectors can be witnessed today, and all the Resistance front day after day is heading towards more strength and power, said the Iranian President.
“Therefore, I want to say clearly that the current conditions in the new world order are in favor of the Resistance and against the Zionist entity.”
Raisi continued, “The threats made by the Zionist entity are sometimes empty, and they know it.”
“The evidence for that is that they cannot confront the Resistance youth in Palestine and the region,” he said. “So how does it make threats about attacking Iran? This is farcical talk that no one in the world believes or takes seriously.”
Asked about Iran’s response to any Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic, the Iranian President said that the first response to the aggression would be catastrophic for the entity and would lead to its demise. “Because Iran’s power today is within the country, and Iran’s power in the region is of an unmistakable magnitude,” he explained.
“The first blunder and step made by the Zionist entity will be its last, and there will no longer be this thing called the Zionist entity to even take another step,” he warned.
“We have said and announced this in various forums, and they know very well that we are serious about this view, this step, and this decision.”
Israelis know that the initial Iranian response will lead to the collapse of the Iron Dome, Raisi said.
Syria integral to Axis of Resistance
With regard to Syria, Raisi said “Syria has always been on the frontlines of the Axis of Resistance, whether during the time of President Bashar Al-Assad’s father, the late Hafez Al-Assad, or during the tenure of President Bashar Al-Assad.”
The US, through the creation and funding of ISIS and the takfiri factions, and through the sowing of sedition in Syria, and other militant groups, was seeking to divide Syria, he said.
The Americans also incited the Arab countries against Syria, and the Arab countries also sought to settle their scores with Syria, he added.
However, despite thinking that Syria will collapse and the Resistance frontlines will fall through the internal war that broke out at the hands of the takfiri factions and through the Zionist support for them as well as the support of the US, the Islamic Republic of Iran stood with the Arab state, and it is perhaps the only country that supported the Syrian government and stood up to all the takfiri factions and separatist movements, and even to some regional states, he said.
“Today, the circumstances have drastically changed in Syria, and the difference is that it is known that the Resistance has paid off,” and with all fairness, “President Bashar Al-Assad has stood firm, and he deserves appreciation,” the Iranian president stressed.
He continued: “The Syrian people have also been courageous. They have proven that they are a people of Resistance and that this era of Resistance is considered a golden era in the history of Syria.”
Raisi praised the Syrian nation that fought “the enemies, the separatists, and the takfiri faction” with courage and faced and endured a lot of hardship, including many economic and security difficulties, but they withstood and fought against this global war on their country.
According to Raisi, Lebanon, Hezbollah, the Syrian people, and Iran were on the battlefront to prevent the nation from being carved up and divided, and the resistance of the Syrian people is worthy of praise, as the actions of the Syrian people and government are very impressive and bring pride.
At present time, he said, “many countries all over the world have come to the realization that Syria is not one to fail and be dealt defeats, and they have come to reconsider their ties with it.”
He also explained that Iran welcomes Syria’s rapprochement with numerous countries all over the world, especially those in the region and the Islamic World.
“The ties between Iran and Syria are highly strategic and highly important, and we stress that these relations will continue and span several spheres, including security, economy, and culture. We are two Muslim peoples, and our ties go way back. There exist many bonds between the two Muslim and brotherly peoples, and we hope that, under the leadership of leader Sayyed Khamenei, who fully stressed the need for the resistance to have a united front, […] the ties between the two countries will continue to develop,” he added.
“His Eminence, the Leader, and the government have announced many times that we will never regret supporting the resistance. In accordance with this policy, we never hesitate to support the resistance, and we will not hesitate. Ever. And my visit to Syria comes within the framework of supporting the resistance,” the Iranian President underlined.
“We must stress several issues related to Syria,” he said. “Firstly, the sovereignty of the Syrian government all over Syrian lands. We affirm this, and we believe that the US must leave Syria as soon as possible. We believe that Syrian sovereignty should prevail over all Syrian lands.”
“We, during the tripartite summit in Tehran, with the participation of Turkey and Russia, must emphasize emboldening Syria’s sovereignty over all Syrian lands. This is for the benefit of Syria and the benefit of the region.”
The second issue, he underlined is regarding the return of the Syrian refugees to their homes and cities.
Thirdly, he went on to say, a certainly important issue is the reconstruction of Syria. “Regarding the reconstruction of Syria, we are ready to cooperate with the Syrian people and government, and we, in the Islamic Republic, have highly qualified technical teams and companies capable of playing an important role in the reconstruction of Syria.”
Iran’s growing presence in the international arena
Iran extends its arm in friendship and cooperation to any country that seeks cooperation with it. From this point of view, Tehran is ready to deal and cooperate with all countries, whether within or outside the region.
“We condemn US unilateralism. We think we should not be under anyone’s authority, and we must not exercise authority over others. We believe that the countries of the world are not limited to three or four countries that consider themselves the rulers of the world, such as the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran relies on constructive relations with all countries on the basis of common interests,” Raisi explained.
Iran has good relations with China and with Russia as well, he highlighted, noting that the Republic’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization provided it with a platform for cooperation with major countries in Asia.
“We consider that these relations are good relations for us, and we are ready to join BRICS, and this provides the Islamic Republic of Iran with new possibilities to play an important role using its own capabilities and abundant energies,” he said.
The United States, according to the Iranian President, is trying to sow despair among the Iranian people regarding their capabilities. However, the Islamic Republic stresses the cultivation of trust and hope, and there is evidence of its initiative in the various spheres within which the country operates.
“The enemy wanted to isolate us, limit our relations and hinder our presence in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and regional and international organizations, but its attempts were met with failure, and our relations with the world are growing by the day.”
Martyr Qassem Soleimani
Raisi also touched on the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, saying he was a hero in the fight against terrorism, lauding his role in the resistance struggle in Syria and Iraq. “He confronted the offensives of ISIS and the Takfiri groups through help from the popular resistance groups in Iraq and Syria, and he was successful.”
“In cooperation with the Iraqi and Syrian people, and in cooperation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, he was able to eradicate the stream of terrorists,” he stressed.
Commenting on his raising of Soleimani’s photo at the UNGA, Raisi said he did that to show those who claim to be fighting terrorism that they “are assassinating the hero of the fight against terrorism. Who assassinated him? The US President at the time [Donald Trump].”
The assassination of Hajj Qassem Soleimani is the assassination of not only a prominent military figure, but also a strategic figure, a strategic person, and a man who was always on the battlefield who managed to simultaneously be a capable diplomat. “Such a person was assassinated by the Americans.”
Raisi also cited a saying by Iranian Revolutionary Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei when he said that “Martyr Hajj Qassem Soleimani is more dangerous than Hajj Qassem Soleimani himself,” pointing out that they thought that “by assassinating Hajj Qassem Soleimani, they would assassinate his thoughts, and they are today seeing the ramifications of this all over the region […] The people of the region and its youths are very proud of Soleimani, and he has become a school of thought for our people and the resistance’s youth all over the region.”
People of the region have faith in Nasrallah
Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, enjoys a special stature not only in Lebanon but in the region at large, whereby the party stands as a robust pillar of regional resistance.
On the day of the party’s inception – founded by martyr Sayyed Abbas Moussawi and persisted through the efforts of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the revolutionary Lebanese youth – nobody would have expected that the Zionist entity would withdraw from south Lebanon.
“And later, when Hezbollah chivalrously withstood the large-scale Israeli aggression in the 2006 war, they proved, for the first time, that Israel is not invincible. Hezbollah inspired the Palestinian youth to stand up to the Zionist entity, which was evident through the First, Second, and Third Intifada,” he explained
“Today, we see the Palestinian youth admirably withstanding Israeli aggression and contending it. This is what they learned of Hezbollah in Lebanon. “
“Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah is a remarkable character. In addition to being a knowledgeable cleric, he is an excellent politician and revolutionary. He enjoys a remarkable flair for captivating the hearts of his audience, appealing to the different sects of the Lebanese constituency.”
Raisi emphasized that revolutionary youth all around the world look to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as a revolutionary icon of anti-imperialism.
“In Iran, specifically, we consider him a prominent individual, and we see his character as immortal in light of his struggle and resilience against the Zionist entity.”
Raisi also emphasized the special type of trust vested in Hezbollah by the Lebanese constituency and in Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah specifically, saying it was a special and deep relationship.
He also noted that he has heard that even from within the occupied territories, the Palestinians have a large degree of faith in Sayyed Nasrallah. He added that the relationship between Sayyed Nasrallah and all the Muslim nations, including Iran, is a deep relationship built on trust.
The Iranian people
The Iranian President underlined that the Iranian people have been convinced that they can stand up on their own two feet and independently manage their affairs, without reliance on foreign powers
“This confidence in their own capabilities has been engraved into the Iranian people’s minds, and this, in itself, is the key to the Iranian people’s success and victory.”
Raisi also lauded the role of the Iranian leadership and the directives of Iranian Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei, saying it was fair to say that his eminence “is leading the people through everything, and despite all the turmoil, he led the country and gave it strength.”
“The Iranian people have come to realize that this system is a tent, and the pillar propping it up is the guardian of the jurors and the leader of the Islamic Republic, therefore they trust both of these jurisdictions.”
Iran has today achieved self-sufficiency, and it has been able to be a leading country in the defense and nuclear sectors, he concluded.
The question is inevitable: what’s the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business.
The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports). China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery.
Very few in the West know that Ukraine joined BRI way back in 2014, and a BRI trade and investment center was operating in Kiev since 2018. BRI projects include a 2017 drive to build the fourth line of the Kiev metro system as well as 4G installed by Huawei. Everything is stalled since 2022.
Noble Agri, a subsidiary of COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation), invested in a sunflower seed processing complex in Mariupol and the recently built Mykolaiv grain port terminal. The next step will necessarily feature cooperation between Donbass authorities and the Chinese when it comes to rebuilding their assets that may have been damaged during the war.
Beijing also tried to become heavily involved in the Ukraine defense sector and even buy Motor Sich; that was blocked by Kiev.
Watch that neon
So what we have in Ukraine, from the Chinese point of view, is a trade/investment cocktail of BRI, railways, military supplies, 4G and construction jobs. And then, the key vector: neon.
Roughly half of neon used in the production of semiconductors was supplied, until recently, by two Ukrainian companies; Ingas in Mariupol, and Cryoin, in Odessa. There’s no business going on since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO). That directly affects the Chinese production of semiconductors. Bets can be made that the Hegemon is not exactly losing sleep over this predicament.
Ukraine does represent value for China as a BRI crossroads. The war is interrupting not only business but, in the bigger picture, one of the trade and connectivity corridors linking Western China to Eastern Europe. BRI conditions all key decisions in Beijing – as it is the overarching concept of Chinese foreign policy way into mid-century.
And that explains Xi’s phone call, debunking any NATOstan nonsense on China finally paying attention to the warmongering actor.
As relevant as BRI is the overarching bilateral relationship dictating Beijing’s geopolitics: the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.
So let’s transition to the meeting of Defense Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) earlier this week in Delhi.
The key meeting in India was between Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Chinese colleague Li Shangfu. Li was recently in Moscow, and was received by Putin in person for a special conversation. This time he invited Shoigu to visit Beijing, and that was promptly accepted.
Needless to add that every single player in the SCO and beyond, including nations that are for the moment just observers or dialogue partners as well as others itching to become full members, such as Saudi Arabia, paid very close attention to the Shoigu-Shangfu camaraderie.
When it comes to the profoundly strategic Central Asian “stans”, that represents the six feet under treatment for the Hegemon wishful thinking of using them in a Divide and Rule scheme pitting Russia against China.
Shoigu-Shangfu also sent a subtle message to SCO members India and Pakistan – stop bickering and in the case of Delhi, hedging your bets – and to full member (in 2023) Iran and near future member Saudi Arabia: here’s where’s it at, this the table that matters.
All of the above also points to the increasing interconnection between BRI and SCO, both under Russia-China leadership.
BRICS is essentially an economic club – complete with its own bank, the NDB – and focused on trade. It’s mostly about soft power. The SCO is focused on security. It’s about hard power. Together, these are the two key organizations that will be paving the multilateral way.
As for what will be left of Ukraine, it is already being bought by Western mega-players such as BlackRock, Cargill and Monsanto. Yet Beijing certainly does not count on being left high and dry. Stranger things have happened than a future rump Ukraine positioned as a functioning trade and connectivity BRI partner.
Though Crimea is no stranger to bloodshed, all battles fought there seem to have been akin to those of Stalingrad on a bad day. When the Reds overran Crimea’s Whites in the Russian Civil War, they had a five to one advantage and they attacked from over the shallow marshes dividing Crimea from the rest of Russia, an option Zelensky’s lemmings do not have.
When Hitler’s Army Group South captured Crimea, they had the help of the Italian navy and Dora, the giant Schwerer Gustav railway gun. Although the Crimean peninsula witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the entire Eastern Front during the eight months it took the Soviets to boot out Hitler’s Army Group South, that ferocious fighting and huge loss of life should still be a factor for Zelensky’s doomed Army Group South to ponder, even though they march not to Hitler’s drum, but to that of Zelensky’s own candy man.
Although this excellent article summarises that and other Crimean battles, its main contribution is it tells us that this pending Crimean battle is, like all Crimean battles before it, not about the integrity of Zelensky’s artificial Ukrainian rump Reich but about controlling the Crimean peninsula so as to control the Black Sea and entry to the Bosporus Straits.
When looked at through that more sober strategic vista, Zelensky is just a coked-up NATO bit player. Whether it is plagiarising Churchill or King Henry V for the British Parliament, or aping Stalin’s Order 227 ordering his rump Reich’s lemmings to fight to the last man, Zelensky’s role is to parrot the lines his candy men give him and nothing more. Though this former porno actor is not a serious player, his collaboration with the Banderites has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians and, for that, he and his wife should pay, just as Mussolini and his mistress paid. That said, they are but well-paid bit players in this Russo-Ukrainian tragedy and are of no major strategic consequence.
In the unlikely event Zelensky’s Army Group South were to capture Sevastopol, then Russia’s Black Sea fleet would be permanently neutralised and the Russian Navy would effectively only be left with Vladivostok, Murmansk and the Baltic. As NATO’s Army Group North is upping the ante to a nuclear showdown around the Kola peninsula and, as Army Group Centre, spear-headed by Warsaw’s day dreamers, wants to restore the former glories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Eastern Europe, Murmansk and the Baltic included, are in for a very bumpy ride.
And all for what? Certainly not for Ukraine, whose people are already sick of their coke-addled puppet President. The goal is to box Russia in from Crimea in the South up to Kola in the Arctic and to thereby reduce Russia to a giant quarry for Uncle Sam and his fellow-pirates to pillage.
It would be a simple, daring and, perhaps, even perfect plan if it did not have one central flaw. Russians have proved themselves, time and again, masters at defensive warfare and nowhere more so than in Crimea, which is the penultimate goal of Army Group South.
Should Zelensky’s lemmings move on Crimea, Russian naval and land artillery will turn the Perekop Isthmus into a lake of Ukrainian blood, an unrelenting fire-zone where everything that moves dies. Ukrainian troops attacking over the Syvash during low tide will find themselves isolated when the tide comes back in with the non-stop incoming Russian artillery and rocket fire they’ll have to contend with making Lord Raglan’s Light Brigade Charge look like a master class in military genius.
As an amphibious or airborne assault are both logistically impossible without major NATO input along the lines of D Day, the Perekop Isthmus and the Syvash are Crimea’s only two vulnerable points, if indeed they are really vulnerable.
Though NATO’s goal is to control the Black Sea, just as its previous goals included taking control of the Yalu River, the Ho Chi Minh trail and Helmand Province, the really tangible goal is again just to milk the Western tax-payer by gathering funding, material & manpower to slaughter Russian children, Korean children, Vietnamese children, Afghan children or whomever else it is who happens to be in the way of these serial mass murderers.
Though Zelensky and his wife have serious fraud and other cases to answer for, neither they nor the putative leaders of Army Group South are the main culprits in all of this. That honour belongs to Joe Biden, the Big Guy and the arms and Big Pharma companies he and his whole stinking family are in hock to. Consider this recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI), showing that Europe’s military expenditure saw its sharpest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years and that total global military expenditure has reached a new, unprecedented height of $2.24 trillion, with the Yanks taking up the lion’s share of that colossal amount. What this means in plain English is that not only Zelensky but Crooked Joe Biden and the other gangsters of the British and American regimes are coining it, just as they did in all their other previous money-making wars.
Whether we are talking about Crimea, Murmansk, the Black Sea or the Straits of Taiwan, NATO’s goal remains the same one of controlling the world’s choke points and sea lanes to extract rents that are not their due.
Although the High Commands of Russia, China and NATO are undoubtedly aware of all this, the real question is what can be done about it. As the war mongering Economist magazine has kindly informed us that Russia exchanged 60 Su-35 aircraft with Iran for several thousand kamikaze drones, the Iranians are certainly making their own considerable contribution to bringing peace to Europe.
But what of China, The Economist and ourselves? Could China not sail a peace-seeking flotilla of its modern war ships into the Black Sea on the same pretext that little Germany uses to send its spy ships to the Chinese coast because Josep Borell (a Barcelona waiter who plays a double act with Forest Gump doppelganger Ursula von der Leyen), asked them to? And what of The Economist and NATO’s other media outlets, who continue to cleanse themselves of all dissenting voices? NATO’s recent media scalps have included Tucker Carlson, today’s right-wing equivalent of Phil Donahue, whom NATO filleted for opposing their Iraqi genocide. And, though they are big fish, the little fish have not been forgotten either. The CIA have arrested members of obscure African-American groups for being Putin agents (Assad apologists are last year’s fashion) and the Germans have, as previously discussed, put a bounty out on citizen journalist Alina Lipp and her family. Stopping Russian journalists accompanying Lavrov to the United Nations is, of course, par for the course as all one can expect from these CIA pigs is an ignorant grunt.
Although Army Group South has not got a hope in hell of over-running Crimea, it will, together with Army Group North and Army Group Centre, achieve a number of key NATO objectives. They will keep Russia under pressure, they will further emasculate Central and Western Europe, they will make a ton of money for Joe Mr Big Guy Biden and his ilk and Hollywood and the media will have a great and lucrative time spinning all of this and promising more of the same star-spangled hypocrisy to their tens of millions of gullible customers.
Perhaps things were much the same when the Tauri, the Scythians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Byzantines all, so long ago, jostled over this part of Russia. Who, bar the ancient historians, is to know? And who is to care as a gang of American draft dodgers are set to bring more misery on Europe not only through this revamped Army Group South, but through Army Group North and Army Group Centre as well.? Although the hope of the civilised world has to be that the forces of Belarus and Russia will prevail, as long as these Anglo-American war profiteers continue to enjoy their safe havens in Western Europe and the United States, we will never see an end to their crimes, not in Crimea, not in the Black Sea nor anywhere else under our common canopy.
The proxy war in Ukraine is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.
It has become patently obvious to the world that the conflict in Ukraine is a dirty and desperate geopolitical confrontation, despite massive Western media efforts to portray it as something else more noble – the usual charade of chivalry and virtue to disguise naked Western imperialism.
The death and destruction in Ukraine is nothing but a proxy war by the United States and its NATO partners to defeat Russia in a strategic gambit. But the unspoken objective does not end with Russia. The U.S. and its Western imperialist lackeys are driven to push for confrontation with China too.
As if taking on Russia is not reckless enough! The Western powers want to double down on their warmongering with China. This is all because the underlying impetus is for Washington and its Western minions to promote U.S.-led dominance of the global order. Russia and China are the main obstacles to that path of would-be dominance, and hence we see this manic drive for aggression stemming from Washington, the executive power of the Western order.
It should be obvious that while the U.S.-led NATO axis has stoked the war in Ukraine to calamitous heights, this same axis is wantonly inciting tensions with China. This observation alone should be enough to condemn the criminality of Western powers.
This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.
In a scathing speech to the United Nations Security Council this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be properly resolved without an understanding of the geopolitical context. In other words, the war in the former Soviet republic which erupted last February has bigger causes than what the Western powers and their compliant news media would try to pretend otherwise.
Defense of Ukraine? Defense of democracy? Defense of international law? Defense of national sovereignty? These are some of the laughable claims made by Washington and its allies. One only has to consider the decades of total trashing of the UN Charter and democratic principles by the United States and its rogue partners in their pursuit of criminal wars to realize that their virtue-signaling over Ukraine is a vile joke.
Lavrov’s address to the Security Council was a stunning rebuke of the hypocrisy and criminality of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers, as well as the European Union. His speech was akin to the scene in the classic old movie The Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled back on the buffoonish villain for all to see. Any objective observer would agree with the Russian foreign minister’s excoriating survey of modern history and why the war in Ukraine has tragically manifested. Lamentably, if we fail to understand history and the real causes of conflicts, then we are condemned to repeat the horrors.
Ironically, Western leaders have at times revealed the bigger geopolitical agenda with their own misspoken arrogant words. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously blurted out a call for regime change in Moscow while his senior aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, have succumbed to the intoxication of their narcissism and hubris by saying that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is the “defeat of Russia”.
Other NATO senior figures, such as the stupid, conceited Polish leaders and their Baltic buddies, have also come out and stated that the war’s ulterior agenda is to vanquish Russia. The fascist skeletons of their Nazi-collusion past have resurrected their deathly rattles, uncontrollably.
As Lavrov’s address to the Security Council intimates, the systematic violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western partners is a deplorable continuation of the Nazi fascism and imperialist barbarism that was supposed to have been defeated in World War Two. The culmination of the constant, unbridled Western imperialist criminality and its state terrorism is the current war in Ukraine and the growing aggression toward China over Taiwan as a pretext.
In all of this, woefully, the Western public has been flagrantly lied to by their governments and media as to the real nature of the war in Ukraine. American and European citizens have been bilked for hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev whose function is to act as a NATO spear-tip against Russia, and ultimately China when the NATO powers feel they are done with Ukraine. (The latter is a futile ambition, as is becoming increasingly evident.)
Journalists and antiwar activists in the West who highlight the malfeasance over Ukraine are either sacked, vilified, censored, or sanctioned into poverty, or even imprisoned.
Nevertheless, the Western public and the rest of the world are increasingly becoming aware of the odious charade. By definition, charades are inevitably untenable.
The Global South – the majority of the 193 nations at the UN – has had it with Western capitalist hegemony and its outrageous neocolonialist privileges. The incremental dumping of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency for trade is a testament to the historic shift towards a multipolar order in defiance of Western unipolar elitism. The nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia understand that the U.S.-led NATO war in Ukraine is a desperate last-ditch bid to preserve an imperialist global order which should have been eradicated after World War Two with the establishment of the United Nations, but which, regrettably, was not. Because the root cause of imperialism is the AngloAmerican-led Western capitalist order. The end of World War Two, as with World War One, was but a pause in the historical killing machine.
It is now increasingly evident in the light of leaked documents from the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine is a disaster. The Kiev regime is facing defeat at the hands of superior Russian forces even though that regime has been flooded with weapons by the United States and NATO. Great expectations of a Ukrainian victory that were widely predicted by Western leaders and media have been shown to be empty, contemptible lies.
The side-show of this war is a gargantuan racket. Western arms companies have raked in unprecedented profits, while the NATO-backed cabal in Kiev has skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the same Kiev regime that is burning down Orthodox Christian churches, exterminating the Russian language, lionizing World War Two Nazi criminals, and locking up any critical opposition and media.
But the main takeaway is the lies that the United States and Western lackeys, including the entire media industry, have been telling about the proxy war in Ukraine. This war is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.
We should not be surprised by such blatant lying and deception. President Joe Biden and his administration have been telling barefaced lies to conceal the corruption oozing out of Biden’s own family. Biden and his son Hunter have exploited Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 for personal enrichment. The president has even reportedly got his senior aides to do his bidding to censor intelligence agencies and media from revealing to the public the corruption at the heart of his family. (Risibly, the truth is smeared as Russian or Chinese disinformation!)
The lies that Biden and his administration tell about personal corruption are indelibly coupled with the lies told about the proxy war in Ukraine.
It is increasingly clear that the American public, the European public, and the rest of the world have been duped in multiple ways. The phony war in Ukraine is exposing the deep, stinking well of corruption in this White House. There will be hell to pay.
The war in Ukraine was planned to extend to Syria. Leaked secret documents revealed the Ukrainian military were planning to attack Russian troops stationed in Syria in an effort to distract Russia and cause losses and casualties far from the battlefield in eastern Europe.
Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested by the FBI in the investigation of leaked classified military intelligence which were viewed on the Discord chat platform.
Among the documents were details of the planning and assessment of attacks on Russian military capabilities in Syria, to be carried out by the US military partner there, the SDF.
The SDF control the northeast quarter of Syria and the troops are made up of about one-third Kurds and two-thirds Arab tribal members. The Kurdish semi-autonomous region in Syria was created by the US alliance with the Communist administration of the Kurds under Ilham Ahmed and General Mazloum Abdi.
The area the US-Kurdish alliance controls is not populated by a majority of Kurds, but the Kurds do represent a sizable ethnic population. Once they became financially and militarily supported by the US, the Kurds were able to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing which displaced the original inhabitants from their homes, lands and businesses.
The SDF working alongside the US occupation forces in Syria were planned to be supplied with drones and other equipment to attack the Russian troops in Syria. The Russian airbase on the coast in Latakia was cited to be attacked as well as other areas.
The Ukrainian military intelligence had planned the attacks in Syria, using the US allied paramilitary force the SDF, for the purpose of opening a second front in the war with Russia. The planning strategized that Russia would be distracted by attacks on its forces in Syria, and become weaker in their military capabilities.
Ukrainian President Zelensky, a former TV comedienne, cancelled the operations while still in the planning stages.
The Russian military was invited into Syria in October 2015, when the terrorist group Jibhat al-Nusra was at its height and threatened to over-run the coastal region. After the Russian military arrived in Syria, the Russian forces alongside the Syrian Arab Army were successful in pushing the terrorists back. Today, the central government in Damascus controls almost all of Syria with the exception of the Kurdish region previously described, and the small province of Idlib in the north west which is under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the current name of Jibhat al-Nusra. Mohammed al-Julani is in control of Idlib. He started off in Iraq with Al Qaeda, then was sent to Syria by the leader of ISIS, and finally is holding about 3 million civilian hostage in Idlib, while being supplied with humanitarian aid by the US, UN, EU and other charities.
The Russian presence in Syria today can be termed a peace-keeping mission. They still attack ISIS and terrorist positions, but most of their presence is in holding the peace between the Kurds and their sworn enemy, Turkey. If it was not for the Russian military presence in Syria, Turkey would have invaded even further into the Kurdish region, and there could have been massacres.
Russia has a working relationship with Syria, Iran and Turkey and has been negotiating for a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis.
Turkey had been an US ally, but has felt betrayed by the US support of the Kurdish paramilitary SDF, which consists of the core military group YPG, which is aligned with the PKK, a terrorist group responsible for about 30,000 deaths over decades.
Had the Ukrainian plan to attack Russians in Syria been carried out, the response could have been a joint Turkish-Russian military operation against the Kurds, which could have resulted in US military deaths or injuries, and would likely have ended with the US occupation forces withdrawal to Iraq.
If Zelensky hadn’t stopped the plans, Syria could have regained the north east quarter from the Kurds, and Turkey could have vanquished the SDF and YPG. That would then leave Idlib and the terrorists sitting on the border without their US supporters. It could have resulted in Idlib’s terrorist occupiers fleeing under cover of darkness, and the 3 million hostages being set free after more than a decade of captivity.
Under the plan, the SDF asked for protection that they would not be revealed as the source of the planned attacks on the Russian military in Syria, and instead make it appear that the US protected terrorists holding Idlib would be blamed.
Turkey has military troops occupying Idlib, and should the plan have been carried out, Russia could have attacked Idlib as the source of the planned attacks, and this would have been a direct confrontation between Turkey and Russia on Syria soil.
The US may have ordered Zelensky to halt the planned attacks on Russians in Syria. Washington, DC. is insisting to remain occupying bases in Syria to prevent Syria from access to its energy resources, and thus preventing Syria from recovery from the US-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011. The US has failed in their plan to install an American puppet in Syria, but they were successful in making sure they have a compliant and easily manipulated leader in Ukraine.
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Speech of the Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, on the situation in the Middle East
لن نستطيع استيعاب حجم الانعكاسات المتسارعة لنهاية الهيمنة الأميركية على منطقتنا، ولا تفسير أشكال التموضع المتسارع في صفوف اللاعبين الفاعلين في المنطقة، إذا بقينا عند حدود ترسمها ضفاف السياسة والمصالح المباشرة والحروب، وقد كانت جميعها انعكاساً لتحولات أعمق جعلت ظهور هذه الانعكاسات حتمياً؛ فموقع السعودية في قطاع الطاقة وما يمليه من مصالح حيوية مع كل من روسيا والصين، والفشل الأميركي في أفغانستان وصولاً للاعتراف بالفشل وقرار الانسحاب، وحروب المقاومة وصمود قواها وحكوماتها في سورية وإيران، والصعود الروسي والنهوض الصيني، كلها عناصر حقيقيّة وصحيحة لعبت دوراً في التظهير السياسي للتحوّلات الجارية منذ انهيار وتفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي وتقدّم أميركا كقوة عالميّة وحيدة مهيمنة، تخوض الحرب دون خصم يواجهها، وتفرض العقوبات دون قانون دولي يمنعها، حتى بدأ الخط البياني الأميركي من تراجع الى تراجع، ومن أزمة الى أزمة، فما هي التحوّلات العميقة التي نتحدّث عنها؟
خاضت واشنطن معركة السيطرة على العالم تحت عنوان تحويل العولمة، بما هي تعبير عن ثورة تكنولوجية أضعفت أهميّة المسافات الفاصلة في الجغرافيا إلى مصدر لإلغاء الجغرافيا، بما تختزنه من خصوصيّات ومقدرات تميز الشعوب والأمم والدول، وكانت العالمية هي النسخة السياسية للعولمة، بمعنى الحكومة العالمية، التي لا تعترف بالجغرافيا، والفرد المعولم الذي يجري إلغاء خصوصياته الثقافية والدينية والتاريخية والقومية ليصير فرداً من أتباع الحكومة العالمية يشترك في السباق على الرفاه، بدلاً من التمسك بالجذور، لكن العولمة بما هي ثورة تكنولوجية منحت المنصات والقدرات والفرص للسباق بين مفهومي الفرد المنتمي لخصوصية ثقافية وجذور دينية وقومية، والحكومة العالمية، فكانت العولمة التكنولوجية التي اختصرت مسافات الجغرافيا سبباً رئيسياً للتحول الذي رد الاعتبار للجغرافيا بصفتها الحامل للخصوصيات الثقافية الدينية والقومية، ولم ينتبه الأميركيون إلى أن التحوّل الذي ركبوا على موجته في تفكيك الاتحاد السوفياتي، هو التمسك بالخصوصية الثقافية والقومية والدينية، التي كانت مقموعة في زمن عولمة من نوع آخر مثلها الاتحاد السوفياتي، وتجاهل الأميركيون القاعدة البسيطة التي تقول إن الباب الذي تدخل منه لا يمكنك منع الآخرين من الدخول عبره. وها هو الغرب كله في حرب أوكرانيا يخوض الحرب بوجه روسيا تحت عناوين سبق أن أعلن موتها، عندما قال إن زمن السيادة والوطنية قد انتهى في ظل العولمة وما نتج عن العالمية.
بمثل ما أصبح الفرد هو الوحدة التي تقوم عليها عولمة التكنولوجيا، حيث الاتصال بالتكنولوجيا فردي ولا يعبر من بوابة دولة أو قومية أو دين، عادت للفرد أهميته في مواجهة الآلة، حيث صار هو العمود الفقري للحروب، فعادت الجغرافيا تقاتل نهاية التاريخ، فالتاريخ من صناعة الجغرافيا المتعددة المتعاونة والمتحاربة، وظهر من رحم الخصوصية الثقافية والدينية والقومية، الفرد المقاتل بالروح مقابل الفرد المعولم المنتمي لظلال الحكومة العالمية المستند الى تفوق الآلة، وسقطت نظرية حرب أكلاف صفر، ومثلها نظرية لا حروب في البر بعد الآن والحرب تحسم من الجو، التي تحدث عنها دونالد رامسفيلد في حرب العراق، وجاءت حرب تموز 2006 تعبيراً عن أول مواجهة مكتملة بين النموذجين، وكان انتصار المقاومة في هذه الحرب إعلاناً كاملاً لفشل جيوش الأفراد المعولمين في مواجهة جيوش أفراد الخصوصية الثقافية والدينية والقومية، وتكرّر الأمر في غزة وكانت أفغانستان المحطة الفاصلة.
تغير مع عودة الجغرافيا والخصوصيات الثقافية والدينية والقومية، وعودة الفرد وعودة الروح، ما أكمل المشهد الجديد، حيث ظهرت الدولة الوطنية قادرة على الصمود والمقاومة بوجه حروب أميركية شديدة الضراوة وكانت ذروتها في الحرب على سورية، حيث وقفت الدولة الوطنية السورية بخلفيتها القومية، والدولة الوطنية الإيرانية بخلفيتها الإسلامية، تعبران عن الخصوصيتين الكبيرتين في المنطقة، العروبة والإسلام، وكان حزب الله كتعبير مزدوج عن هاتين الخصوصيتين القيمة المضافة في حسم وجهة الحرب التي أعادت تثبيت مكانة الدولة الوطنية في وجه الحكومة العالمية، وتلاقت مع هذه المعادلة والدولة الوطنية الروسية بخلفيتها القيصرية والأرثوذكسية، ثم تواصل التغيير في حرب اليمن حيث ظهرت التكنولوجيا الحربية الجديدة التي استثمرت على العولمة بصفتها ثورة تكنولوجية، قادرة على إسقاط قانون الحرب القديم، وتمكّنت الطائرات المسيّرة والصواريخ المجنحة الصغيرة والدقيقة، من هزيمة حاملات الطائرات العملاقة، وهذه التكنولوجيا الجديدة قابلة للإخفاء والتمويه وبلوغ الأهداف بسرعة ودقة ولا يمكن وقفها، وها هي حرب أوكرانيا تقول الكلمة الفصل لجهة تفوق هذه التكنولوجيا وتموضعها مكان تكنولوجيا حروب الدبابات والطائرات التي حكمت الحربين العالميتين الأولى والثانية. ومن أبرز ما تغير أيضاً هو التغيير الذي أدخله الاقتصاد على مفهوم الدولة المهمة اقتصادياً، بعدما تمّ ربطه لعقود بحجم أرقام الناتج المحلي الذي لا يمكن منافسته لدى دول الاقتصاد الافتراضي، لتظهر العقوبات على روسيا أن الدول التي لا يمكن الاستغناء عنها ليست بالضرورة الدول التي تملك أعلى ناتج إجمالي، فمن يملك موقعاً لا يعوض في توفير موارد الطاقة لا يمكن الاستغناء عنه مهما كان حجم ناتجه الإجمالي، وهذا صحيح في حال روسيا وصحيح أيضاً في حال السعودية.
أظهرت الجغرافيا عودة التاريخ، ووضعت قوانين جديدة لمساره، وفي زمن العولمة بما هي ثورة تكنولوجية تم ردّ الاعتبار لقيمة عدد السكان، المستهلكين والمتصلين، وصار للدول مكانة اقتصادية وسياسية ترتبط بعناصر يقع عدد السكان في موقع هام منها، لا تمحوه العوامل الأخرى من القوة والغنى، وصار النفوذ السياسي والاقتصادي والعسكري للدول يرتبط طردياً بهذا العامل، وحيث على الدول التي تملك نفوذاً فائضاً أن تعيد التأقلم مع نفوذ يناسب حجمها السكاني ومحيطها الجغرافي، برزت فرص لنفوذ قابل للنمو للدول التي لا تملك ما يتناسب من نفوذ مع حجمها السكاني ومحيطها الجغرافي، عندما تمتلك قوة اقتصادية وعسكرية كافية لحماية هذا النفوذ. وهذا ما رسم نهاية حرب أفغانستان كنفوذ فائض يجب التخلي عنه، ويرسم مستقبل حرب أوكرانيا كنفوذ حيوي مشروع وممكن لروسيا، ويرسم مكانة الاتفاق السعودي الإيراني الصيني في معادلات النفوذ الإقليمي في المنطقة.
العلم يتغيّر بسرعة تحت تأثير قوانين غير قابلة للإلغاء والتطويع، حتى ينمو نفوذ الدول الصاعدة الى حدود الإشباع التي تحدّدها مصادر قوتها السكانية والاقتصادية والعسكرية، ويتراجع نفوذ الدول المهيمنة الى عتبة الإشباع التي تمّ تخطيها كثيراً، لأن العولمة متعددة والعالمية أحادية، وعلى العالمية أن تخضع لقوانين العولمة، بعد التمرّد الفاشل الذي أعلن نهاية التاريخ.
Leaked US military documents show the US believes Russia will be able to continue funding its war in Ukraine for at least another year despite Western sanctions, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The assessments were part of a trove of documents allegedly released by Jack Teixeira, an Air National guardsman who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted for the leaks.
According to the Post, the leaked documents show that Russia’s economic elite are unlikely to withdraw support for Russian President Vladimir Putin even if they don’t agree entirely on the actions in Ukraine and have taken a hit from US sanctions.
“Moscow is relying on increased corporate taxes, its sovereign wealth fund, increased imports and businesses adaptability to help mitigate economic pressures,” the assessment reads.
The Post said the documents are marked with a code that suggests the intelligence was gathered by intercepting private conversations held by Russians on limiting the impact of sanctions.
While Russia’s economy took a major hit from Western sanctions, Moscow’s efforts to shield itself from the US-led economic campaign has kept its currency strong and allowed energy exports to keep flowing.
In the early days of the invasion, President Biden bragged that sanctions turned the Russian ruble into “rubble,” but it quickly bounced back and was one of the strongest-performing currencies of 2022. The ruble is currently at similar levels to how it was performing before the invasion.
Russia has also found new markets for its oil in Asia, and its oil revenue has continued to soar despite the G7’s attempts to place a price cap on Russian crude. The US is pushing other G7 nations to agree on new sanctions that would ban all exports to Russia but is facing pushback from the EU and Japan.
Author: Dave DeCamp
Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
US imports of Saudi oil are at historic lows, Chinese purchases of Saudi oil continue to grow, and Russian-Saudi energy interests have fully converged. If it’s ‘all about the economy,’ then Saudi-US ties may never quite recover.
“Our allies in the Gulf no longer honor the deal that was made decades ago even though we still have a big physical military presence in the Gulf, bigger than ever before, and we keep giving Gulf nations a pass on human rights violations. Too often our Middle East allies act in conflict with our security interests.”
– Chairman of the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism of Committee on Foreign Relations in the US Senate, Senator Chris Murphy, July 2022.
The war in Ukraine and the intensification of Great Power competition have cast a shadow over global markets and prompted some surprising changes in the foreign policies of states. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is among those countries, and its relationship with the US is currently passing through a very critical period. Today, Riyadh seeks a more conditional relationship with Washington, one that takes into account converging Saudi interests with non-western states.
There are many reasons why the kingdom is adopting a more pragmatic foreign policy. One of the key factors is energy relations, particularly as Riyadh seeks to preserve and grow its mutual interests with other major powers, such as China and Russia.
The birth of the petrodollar
The “Nixon Shock” in 1971 marked a shift in economic policy for the US, which sought to prioritize its own economic growth and stability over that of other states. This led to the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the convertibility of US dollars into gold. Washington moved instead to establish a new system in which the US dollar was pegged to a commodity with global demand in order to maintain its position as the world’s dominant reserve currency.
In 1974, the petrodollar agreement was struck, in which Saudi Arabia agreed to sell oil exclusively in US dollars in exchange for US military, security, and economic development assistance. The deal effectively tied the value of the US dollar to global demand for oil and ensured its continued dominance as the world’s primary reserve currency.
US dependence on Saudi oil
After the petrodollar agreement, Saudi oil exports to the US surged, making Saudi Arabia’s security all the more critical for Washington. By 1991, the US imported 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of Saudi oil, a sharp increase from 438,000 bpd in 1974.
This represented 29.5 percent of the total US oil imports in 1991, and 26.4 percent of the total Saudi oil exports – further emphasizing for Washington the importance of maintaining Saudi Arabia’s security and stability. But the staggering dependence on foreign – and Saudi – oil imports also created political blowback in the US, which launched plans to reduce its imports and ramp up domestic oil production.
This was motivated by several factors, including the potential negative impact of any energy market shocks – such as the decline in Iranian oil exports after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – on the US economy, the potential impact of geopolitical disputes on West Asian oil exports, and technological advances that facilitated increased oil production in the US.
Over the following decades, Washington was able to successfully reduce its oil imports from Saudi Arabia: In 2020, the US only imported 356,000 bpd of Saudi oil, which accounted for just 6 percent of all US oil imports and 4.8 percent of all Saudi oil exports.
Changing oil market dynamics
In this process, Saudi Arabia lost much of its value as a market for the Americans, and the US is no longer dependent on Saudi Arabia as a significant oil source. Furthermore, the US’ significant increase in shale oil production created a major new competitor in the energy market, which raised concerns in Riyadh about its declining influence as a strategic supplier of oil to the world.
To diversify its oil export options, Saudi Arabia began turning eastward to China, the world’s largest oil importer. Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has gradually become China’s primary source of oil, with Chinese oil imports from Saudi Arabia increasing by 16.3 percent between 1994 and 2005, reaching 1.75 million bpd in 2022.
Changing oil market dynamics
In this process, Saudi Arabia lost much of its value as a market for the Americans, and the US is no longer dependent on Saudi Arabia as a significant oil source. Furthermore, the US’ significant increase in shale oil production created a major new competitor in the energy market, which raised concerns in Riyadh about its declining influence as a strategic supplier of oil to the world.
To diversify its oil export options, Saudi Arabia began turning eastward to China, the world’s largest oil importer. Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has gradually become China’s primary source of oil, with Chinese oil imports from Saudi Arabia increasing by 16.3 percent between 1994 and 2005, reaching 1.75 million bpd in 2022.
Strengthening economic and diplomatic relations with Beijing has become a necessity for Riyadh, which derives 70 percent of its export revenues from oil. The same applies to China, a global power that actively seeks to diversify its oil sources to prevent reliance on a single country.
In recent years, Russia has also emerged as an essential oil industry partner for the Saudis. The creation of OPEC+ was a response to falling crude oil prices caused partly by the substantial increase in US shale oil production since 2011.
Russia and Saudi Arabia are the world’s top oil exporters, and their cooperation has proven vital for controlling prices by coordinating the quantities of oil pumped into the markets. This led to the 2016 expansion of OPEC – which is controlled by Saudi Arabia – and the establishment of OPEC+ to include Russia.
OPEC+ cooperation after price war
After the negative consequences of the 2020 price war among key oil producers, both Riyadh and Moscow recognized the importance of cooperation to safeguard their energy interests.
In March of that year, OPEC+ had convened in Vienna to address the decline in oil demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the meeting, Saudi Arabia, the organization’s largest producer, proposed reducing production to stabilize prices at a reasonable, higher level, while Russia, the largest non-OPEC producer in OPEC +, opposed the cuts and moved to increase its oil production.
In response to Moscow’s move, the Saudis increased their own production and announced unexpected cuts in oil prices ranging from $6 and $8 per barrel for importers in Europe, Asia, and the US. This announcement triggered a sharp drop in oil prices, with Brent crude plummeting by 30 percent – marking the biggest decline since the 1991 Gulf War – while the WTI benchmark fell by 20 percent.
On 9 March, global stock markets experienced significant losses, and the Russian ruble declined by 7 percent against the US dollar, reaching its lowest level in four years.
The oil price war lasted for approximately a month before OPEC+ members reached a new agreement in April that included historic oil production cuts of 10 million bpd. This experience marked the beginning of uninterrupted energy cooperation between Moscow and Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia: prioritizing its interests
Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, the US has pressured its allies to comply with western sanctions against Russia. Washington has sought to persuade OPEC leader Riyadh to increase oil production to curb the price hike caused by the conflict, but so far, the Saudis have refused these demands.
This has led to heightened US-Saudi tensions, which prompted US President Joe Biden’s unsuccessful visit to Jeddah in July 2022 to try to convince Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to raise oil production levels.
Furthermore, western attempts to establish a price ceiling on Russian oil served only to alarm Saudi Arabia, as it would open the door for customers to impose oil prices on sellers. Despite aggressive attempts to undermine Russia’s energy sector, the US-European western alliance has been unable to do so, and in fact, led to an increase in Russian energy exports to Europe, China, and India last year.
A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, have helped buoy Russian energy exports by purchasing Russian oil and re-exporting it to needy European markets – or using it locally to boost their export revenues. As Russia is the second-largest exporter of oil worldwide, its isolation from the markets would otherwise have significant repercussions, especially for oil-exporting states.
The war in Ukraine demonstrated that Riyadh is prepared to confront Washington when it feels its energy interests are under threat. Today, the US is no longer an energy partner for Saudi Arabia, but rather a competitor. In its stead, Beijing and Moscow have risen to become essential partners for Riyadh, and the mutual energy interests are a major factor behind MbS’ efforts to diversify his country’s foreign policy options.
The US and Saudi Arabia: No longer energy allies
Since the Cold War era began, oil has been a key pillar of the Russian (and former Soviet) economy. It has long been a US priority to be able to influence prices as a pressure tool against Moscow. Since Saudi Arabia is considered an oil superpower, Washington’s cooperation with Riyadh – despite its own dramatically reduced Saudi oil imports – is at the heart of US economic strategies to counter Russia.
For example, in the mid-eighties, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US asked the Saudis to flood oil markets in order to lower prices and undermine the oil revenue-reliant USSR. In 1986, oil prices dropped by two-thirds, from $30 per barrel to nearly $10 per barrel, ultimately crippling the Soviet economy and its geopolitical reach.
But attitudes have sharply altered during the intervening 37 years. Saudi Arabia now views the US as an energy market competitor due to Washington’s increased shale oil production and disinterest in boosting oil imports.
Between 2010 and 2021, US shale oil production grew from approximately 0.59 million bpd to 9.06 million bpd. Riyadh’s response to this new geo-economic development was to raise oil production in 2016, with the aim of lowering prices to undercut the US shale industry, which operates at significantly higher costs.
The Saudis indeed fear a declining role as a strategic supplier of global oil, in large part due to expanded US shale production and energy self-sufficiency. This has driven the Saudis to try and reimpose their oil superiority by lowering prices to undercut competitors with higher production costs – despite the short-term domestic damage caused by increased Saudi oil production.
To this day, Saudi Arabia continues to present an obstacle to US energy interests, and has instead found most common ground with Washington’s main adversaries – Russia, China, Iran – with whom Riyadh’s energy interests intersect.
Contrary to expectations since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy. It has become manifestly clear to Washington’s decision-makers that Saudi Arabia today is not the Saudi Arabia of 1985, willing to undermine its own revenues and energy interests in order to serve a US geopolitical agenda.
Discussions in Washington today have likewise turned to the feasibility of maintaining the US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security, particularly since Riyadh neither provides Americans with energy nor follows its political diktats.
Some believe that the US’ role of acting as a security guarantor in the Persian Gulf merely serves Beijing’s interests by securing China’s main energy sources. Yet others argue that a US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf will create a vacuum filled by Beijing, which will keenly seek to ensure its own energy security.
The one point of clarity, however, is that US-Saudi energy interests are no longer synergistic and that Riyadh’s interests line up far more closely with those of Beijing and Moscow. This remains a key factor driving Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy and economic diversification today.
What remains to be seen is how far the Saudis – deeply and historically bound to western interests – will be willing to challenge the US’ regional hegemony as their goals diverge and Riyadh finds common cause with Washington’s rivals.
US imports of Saudi oil are at historic lows, Chinese purchases of Saudi oil continue to grow, and Russian-Saudi energy interests have fully converged. If it’s ‘all about the economy,’ then Saudi-US ties may never quite recover.
“Our allies in the Gulf no longer honor the deal that was made decades ago even though we still have a big physical military presence in the Gulf, bigger than ever before, and we keep giving Gulf nations a pass on human rights violations. Too often our Middle East allies act in conflict with our security interests.”
– Chairman of the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism of Committee on Foreign Relations in the US Senate, Senator Chris Murphy, July 2022.
The war in Ukraine and the intensification of Great Power competition have cast a shadow over global markets and prompted some surprising changes in the foreign policies of states. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is among those countries, and its relationship with the US is currently passing through a very critical period. Today, Riyadh seeks a more conditional relationship with Washington, one that takes into account converging Saudi interests with non-western states.
There are many reasons why the kingdom is adopting a more pragmatic foreign policy. One of the key factors is energy relations, particularly as Riyadh seeks to preserve and grow its mutual interests with other major powers, such as China and Russia.
The birth of the petrodollar
The “Nixon Shock” in 1971 marked a shift in economic policy for the US, which sought to prioritize its own economic growth and stability over that of other states. This led to the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the convertibility of US dollars into gold. Washington moved instead to establish a new system in which the US dollar was pegged to a commodity with global demand in order to maintain its position as the world’s dominant reserve currency.
In 1974, the petrodollar agreement was struck, in which Saudi Arabia agreed to sell oil exclusively in US dollars in exchange for US military, security, and economic development assistance. The deal effectively tied the value of the US dollar to global demand for oil and ensured its continued dominance as the world’s primary reserve currency.
US dependence on Saudi oil
After the petrodollar agreement, Saudi oil exports to the US surged, making Saudi Arabia’s security all the more critical for Washington. By 1991, the US imported 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of Saudi oil, a sharp increase from 438,000 bpd in 1974.
This represented 29.5 percent of the total US oil imports in 1991, and 26.4 percent of the total Saudi oil exports – further emphasizing for Washington the importance of maintaining Saudi Arabia’s security and stability. But the staggering dependence on foreign – and Saudi – oil imports also created political blowback in the US, which launched plans to reduce its imports and ramp up domestic oil production.
This was motivated by several factors, including the potential negative impact of any energy market shocks – such as the decline in Iranian oil exports after the 1979 Islamic Revolution – on the US economy, the potential impact of geopolitical disputes on West Asian oil exports, and technological advances that facilitated increased oil production in the US.
Over the following decades, Washington was able to successfully reduce its oil imports from Saudi Arabia: In 2020, the US only imported 356,000 bpd of Saudi oil, which accounted for just 6 percent of all US oil imports and 4.8 percent of all Saudi oil exports.
Changing oil market dynamics
In this process, Saudi Arabia lost much of its value as a market for the Americans, and the US is no longer dependent on Saudi Arabia as a significant oil source. Furthermore, the US’ significant increase in shale oil production created a major new competitor in the energy market, which raised concerns in Riyadh about its declining influence as a strategic supplier of oil to the world.
To diversify its oil export options, Saudi Arabia began turning eastward to China, the world’s largest oil importer. Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has gradually become China’s primary source of oil, with Chinese oil imports from Saudi Arabia increasing by 16.3 percent between 1994 and 2005, reaching 1.75 million bpd in 2022.
Strengthening economic and diplomatic relations with Beijing has become a necessity for Riyadh, which derives 70 percent of its export revenues from oil. The same applies to China, a global power that actively seeks to diversify its oil sources to prevent reliance on a single country.
In recent years, Russia has also emerged as an essential oil industry partner for the Saudis. The creation of OPEC+ was a response to falling crude oil prices caused partly by the substantial increase in US shale oil production since 2011.
Russia and Saudi Arabia are the world’s top oil exporters, and their cooperation has proven vital for controlling prices by coordinating the quantities of oil pumped into the markets. This led to the 2016 expansion of OPEC – which is controlled by Saudi Arabia – and the establishment of OPEC+ to include Russia.
OPEC+ cooperation after price war
After the negative consequences of the 2020 price war among key oil producers, both Riyadh and Moscow recognized the importance of cooperation to safeguard their energy interests.
In March of that year, OPEC+ had convened in Vienna to address the decline in oil demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the meeting, Saudi Arabia, the organization’s largest producer, proposed reducing production to stabilize prices at a reasonable, higher level, while Russia, the largest non-OPEC producer in OPEC +, opposed the cuts and moved to increase its oil production.
In response to Moscow’s move, the Saudis increased their own production and announced unexpected cuts in oil prices ranging from $6 and $8 per barrel for importers in Europe, Asia, and the US. This announcement triggered a sharp drop in oil prices, with Brent crude plummeting by 30 percent – marking the biggest decline since the 1991 Gulf War – while the WTI benchmark fell by 20 percent.
On 9 March, global stock markets experienced significant losses, and the Russian ruble declined by 7 percent against the US dollar, reaching its lowest level in four years.
The oil price war lasted for approximately a month before OPEC+ members reached a new agreement in April that included historic oil production cuts of 10 million bpd. This experience marked the beginning of uninterrupted energy cooperation between Moscow and Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia: prioritizing its interests
Since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, the US has pressured its allies to comply with western sanctions against Russia. Washington has sought to persuade OPEC leader Riyadh to increase oil production to curb the price hike caused by the conflict, but so far, the Saudis have refused these demands.
This has led to heightened US-Saudi tensions, which prompted US President Joe Biden’s unsuccessful visit to Jeddah in July 2022 to try to convince Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to raise oil production levels.
Furthermore, western attempts to establish a price ceiling on Russian oil served only to alarm Saudi Arabia, as it would open the door for customers to impose oil prices on sellers. Despite aggressive attempts to undermine Russia’s energy sector, the US-European western alliance has been unable to do so, and in fact, led to an increase in Russian energy exports to Europe, China, and India last year.
A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, have helped buoy Russian energy exports by purchasing Russian oil and re-exporting it to needy European markets – or using it locally to boost their export revenues. As Russia is the second-largest exporter of oil worldwide, its isolation from the markets would otherwise have significant repercussions, especially for oil-exporting states.
The war in Ukraine demonstrated that Riyadh is prepared to confront Washington when it feels its energy interests are under threat. Today, the US is no longer an energy partner for Saudi Arabia, but rather a competitor. In its stead, Beijing and Moscow have risen to become essential partners for Riyadh, and the mutual energy interests are a major factor behind MbS’ efforts to diversify his country’s foreign policy options.
The US and Saudi Arabia: No longer energy allies
Since the Cold War era began, oil has been a key pillar of the Russian (and former Soviet) economy. It has long been a US priority to be able to influence prices as a pressure tool against Moscow. Since Saudi Arabia is considered an oil superpower, Washington’s cooperation with Riyadh – despite its own dramatically reduced Saudi oil imports – is at the heart of US economic strategies to counter Russia.
For example, in the mid-eighties, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US asked the Saudis to flood oil markets in order to lower prices and undermine the oil revenue-reliant USSR. In 1986, oil prices dropped by two-thirds, from $30 per barrel to nearly $10 per barrel, ultimately crippling the Soviet economy and its geopolitical reach.
But attitudes have sharply altered during the intervening 37 years. Saudi Arabia now views the US as an energy market competitor due to Washington’s increased shale oil production and disinterest in boosting oil imports.
Between 2010 and 2021, US shale oil production grew from approximately 0.59 million bpd to 9.06 million bpd. Riyadh’s response to this new geo-economic development was to raise oil production in 2016, with the aim of lowering prices to undercut the US shale industry, which operates at significantly higher costs.
The Saudis indeed fear a declining role as a strategic supplier of global oil, in large part due to expanded US shale production and energy self-sufficiency. This has driven the Saudis to try and reimpose their oil superiority by lowering prices to undercut competitors with higher production costs – despite the short-term domestic damage caused by increased Saudi oil production.
To this day, Saudi Arabia continues to present an obstacle to US energy interests, and has instead found most common ground with Washington’s main adversaries – Russia, China, Iran – with whom Riyadh’s energy interests intersect.
Contrary to expectations since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy. It has become manifestly clear to Washington’s decision-makers that Saudi Arabia today is not the Saudi Arabia of 1985, willing to undermine its own revenues and energy interests in order to serve a US geopolitical agenda.
Discussions in Washington today have likewise turned to the feasibility of maintaining the US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security, particularly since Riyadh neither provides Americans with energy nor follows its political diktats.
Some believe that the US’ role of acting as a security guarantor in the Persian Gulf merely serves Beijing’s interests by securing China’s main energy sources. Yet others argue that a US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf will create a vacuum filled by Beijing, which will keenly seek to ensure its own energy security.
The one point of clarity, however, is that US-Saudi energy interests are no longer synergistic and that Riyadh’s interests line up far more closely with those of Beijing and Moscow. This remains a key factor driving Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy and economic diversification today.
What remains to be seen is how far the Saudis – deeply and historically bound to western interests – will be willing to challenge the US’ regional hegemony as their goals diverge and Riyadh finds common cause with Washington’s rivals.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Hegemon hacks are spinning that the North Atlantic has relocated to South China. Goodnight, and good luck.
The collective cognitive dissonance displayed by the pack of hyenas with polished faces driving U.S. foreign policy should never be underestimated.
And yet those Straussian neo-con psychos have been able to pull off a tactical success. Europe is a ship of fools heading for Scylla and Charybdis – with quislings such as France’s Le Petit Roi and Germany’s Liver Sausage Chancellor cooperating in the debacle, complete with the galleries drowning in a maelstrom of hysterical moralism.
It’s those driving the Hegemon that are destroying Europe. Not Russia.
But then there’s The Big Picture of The New Great Game 2.0.
Two Russian analysts, by different means, have come up with an astonishing, quite complementary, and quite realistic road map.
General Andrei Gurulyov, retired, is now a member of the Duma. He considers that the NATO vs. Russia war on Ukrainian soil will end only by 2030 – when Ukraine would basically have ceased to exist.
His deadline is 2027-2030 – something that no one so far has dared to predict. And “ceasing to exist”, per Gurulyov, means actually disappearing from any map. Implied is the logical conclusion of the Special Military Operation – reiterated over and over again by the Kremlin and the Security Council: the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine; neutral status; no NATO membership; and “indivisibility of security”, equally, for Europe and the post-Soviet space.
So until we have these facts on the ground, Gurulyov is essentially saying that the Kremlin and the Russian General Staff will make no concessions. No Beltway-imposed “frozen conflict” or fake ceasefire, which everyone knows will not be respected, just like the Minsk agreements were never respected.
And yet Moscow, we got a problem. As much as the Kremlin may always insist this is not a war against the Slavic Ukrainian brothers and cousins – which translates into no American-style Shock’n Awe pulverizing everything in sight – Gurulyov’s verdict implies the destruction of the current, cancerous, corrupt Ukrainian state is a must.
A comprehensive sitrep of the crucial crossroads, as it stands, correctly argues that if Russia was in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Chechnya, all periods combined, for another 10 years, the current SMO – otherwise described by some very powerful people in Moscow as an “almost war” – and on top of it against the full force of NATO, could well last another 7 years.
The sitrep also correctly argues that for Russia the kinetic aspect of the “almost war” is not even the most relevant.
In what for all practical purposes is a war to the death against Western neoliberalism, what really matters is a Russian Great Awakening – already in effect: “Russia’s goal is to emerge in 2027-2030 not as a mere ‘victor’ standing over the ruins of some already-forgotten country, but as a state that has re-connected with its historic arc, has found itself, re-established its principles, its courage in defending its vision of the world.”
Yes, this is a civilizational war, as Alexander Dugin has masterfully argued. And this is about a civilizational rebirth. And yet, for the Straussian neo-con psychos, that’s just another racket towards plunging Russia into chaos, installing a puppet and stealing its natural resources.
Fire in the hole
The analysis by Andrei Bezrukov neatly complements Gurulyov’s (here, in Russian). Bezrukov is a former colonel in the SVR (Russian foreign intel) and now a Professor of the Chair of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO and the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank.
Bezrukov knows that the Empire will not take the incoming, massive NATO humiliation in Ukraine lying down. And even before the possible 2027-2030 timeline proposed by Gurulyov, he argues, it is bound to set fire to southern Eurasia – from Turkey to China.
President Xi Jinping, in his memorable visit to the Kremlin last month, told President Putin the world is now undergoing changes “not seen in 100 years”.
Bezrukov, appropriately, reminds us of the state of things then: “In the years from 1914 to 1945, the world was in the same intermediate state that it is in now. Those thirty years changed the world completely: from empires and horses to the emergence of two nuclear powers, the UN, and transatlantic flight. We are entering a similar period, which this time will last about twenty years.”
Europe, predictably, will “whither away”, as “it is no longer the absolute center of the universe.” Amidst this redistribution of power, Bezrukov goes back to one of the key points of a seminal analysis developed in the recent past by Andre Gunder Frank: “200-250 years ago, 70 percent of manufacturing was in China and India. We are going back to about there, which will also correspond to population size.”
So it’s no wonder that the fastest-developing region – which Bezrukov characterizes as “southern Eurasia” – may become a “risk zone”, potentially converted by the Hegemon into a massive power keg.
He outlines how southern Eurasia is peppered by conflicting borders – as in Kashmir, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan. The Hegemon is bound to invest in a flare-up of military conflicts over disputed borders as well as separatist tendencies (for instance in Balochistan). CIA black ops galore.
Still Russia will be able to get by, according to Bezrukov: “Russia has very big advantages, because we are the biggest producer of food and supplier of energy. And without cheap energy there will be no progress and digitalization. Also, we are the link between East and West, without which the continent cannot live, because the continent has to trade. And if the South burns, the main routes will not be through the oceans in the South, but in the North, mainly overland.”
The biggest challenge for Russia will be to keep internal stability: “All states will divide into two groups at this historic turning point: those that can maintain internal stability and move reasonably, bloodlessly into the next technological cycle – and then those that are unable to do so, that slip off the path, that bloom a bloody internal showdown like we had a hundred years ago. The latter will be set back ten to twenty years, will subsequently lick their wounds and try to catch up with everyone else. So our job is to maintain internal stability.”
And that’s where the Great Awakening hinted at by Gurulyov, or Russia reconnecting with its true civilizational ethos, as Dugin would argue, will play its unifying role.
There’s still a long way to go – and a war against NATO to win. Meanwhile, in other news, Hegemon hacks are spinning that the North Atlantic has relocated to South China. Goodnight, and good luck.
No one but the terminally naïve should be surprised that security services lie – and that they are all but certain to cover their tracks when they carry out operations that either violate domestic or international law or that would be near-universally rejected by their own populations.
Which is reason enough why anyone following the fallout from explosions last September that ripped holes in three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea supplying Russian gas to Europe should be wary of accepting anything Western agencies have to say on the matter.
In fact, the only thing that Western publics should trust is the consensus among “investigators” that the three simultaneous blasts deep underwater on the pipelines – a fourth charge apparently failed to detonate – were sabotage, not some freak coincidental accident.
Someone blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, creating an untold environmental catastrophe as the pipes leaked huge quantities of methane, a supremely active global-warming gas. It was an act of unrivaled industrial and environmental terrorism.
If Washington had been able to pin the explosions on Russia, as it initially hoped, it would have done so with full vigor. There is nothing Western states would like more than to intensify world fury against Moscow, especially in the context of NATO’s express efforts to “weaken” Russia through a proxy war waged in Ukraine.
But, after the claim made the rounds of front pages for a week or two, the story of Russia destroying its own pipelines was quietly shelved. That was partly because it seemed too difficult to maintain a narrative in which Moscow chose to destroy a critical part of its own energy infrastructure.
Not only did the explosions cause Russia great financial harm – the country’s gas and oil revenues regularly financed nearly half of its annual budget – but the blasts removed Moscow’s chief influence over Germany, which had been until then heavily dependent on Russian gas. The initial media story required the Western public to believe that President Vladimir Putin willingly shot himself in the foot, losing his only leverage over European resolve to impose economic sanctions on his country.
But even more than the complete lack of a Russian motive, Western states knew they would be unable to build a plausible forensic case against Moscow for the Nord Stream blasts.
Instead, with no chance to milk the explosions for propaganda value, official Western interest in explaining what had happened to the Nord Stream pipelines wilted, despite the enormity of the event. That was reflected for months in an almost complete absence of media coverage.
When the matter was raised, it was to argue that separate investigations by Sweden, Germany and Denmark were all drawing a blank. Sweden even refused to share any of its findings with Germany and Denmark, arguing that to do so would harm its “national security.”
No one, again including the Western media, raised an eyebrow or showed a flicker of interest in what might be really going on behind the scenes. Western states and their compliant corporate media seemed quite ready to settle for the conclusion that this was a mystery cocooned in an enigma.
ISOLATED AND FRIENDLESS
It might have stayed that way forever, except that in February, a journalist – one of the most acclaimed investigative reporters of the past half-century – produced an account that finally demystified the explosions. Drawing on at least one anonymous, highly placed informant, Seymour Hersh pointed the finger for the explosions directly at the US administration and President Joe Biden himself.
Hersh’s detailed retelling of the planning and execution of the Nord Stream blasts had the advantage – at least for those interested in getting to the truth of what took place – that his account fitted the known circumstantial evidence.
At a Senate hearing, top US diplomat Victoria Nuland celebrated the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing:
"Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea." pic.twitter.com/KS5OM4N165
Key Washington figures, from President Biden to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his senior neoconservative official Victoria Nuland – a stalwart of the murky U.S., anti-Russia meddling in Ukraine over the past decade – had either called for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines or celebrated the blasts shortly after they took place.
If anyone had a motive for blowing up the Russian pipelines – and a self-declared one at that – it was the Biden administration. They opposed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 projects from the outset – and for exactly the same reason that Moscow so richly prized them.
My latest: If, as seems likely, the US was behind the pipeline blasts, it shows it's ready to turn the whole of Europe into a battlefield – and bully, betray and potentially sacrifice the continent’s population as cruelly as it has treated the Global South https://t.co/cIN1INfiOQ
In particular, the second pair of pipelines, Nord Stream 2, which was completed in September 2021, would double the amount of cheap Russian gas available to Germany and Western Europe. The only obstacle in its path was the hesitancy of German regulators. They delayed approval in November 2021.
Nord Stream meant major European countries, most especially Germany, would be completely dependent for the bulk of their energy supplies on Russia. That deeply conflicted with U.S. interests. For two decades, Washington had been expanding NATO as an anti-Moscow military alliance embracing ever more of Europe, to the point of butting up aggressively against Russia’s borders.
The Ukrainian government’s covert efforts to become a NATO member – thereby destroying a long-standing mutual and fragile nuclear deterrence between Washington and Moscow – were among the stated reasons why Russia invaded its neighbor in February last year.
Nearly a year into the Ukraine war, the western narrative of an 'unprovoked attack' by Moscow has become impossible to sustain https://t.co/xTaHEibKax
Washington wanted Moscow isolated and friendless in Europe. The goal was to turn Russia into Enemy No. 2 – after China – not leave Europeans looking to Moscow for energy salvation.
The Nord Stream explosions achieved precisely that outcome. They severed the main reason European states had for cozying up to Moscow. Instead, the U.S. started shipping its expensive liquified natural gas across the Atlantic to Europe, both forcing Europeans to become more energy dependent on Washington and, at the same time, fleecing them for the privilege.
But even if Hersh’s story fitted the circumstantial evidence, could his account stand up to further scrutiny?
PECULIARLY INCURIOUS
This is where the real story begins. Because one might have assumed that Western states would be queuing up to investigate the facts Hersh laid bare, if only to see if they stacked up or to find a more plausible alternative account of what happened.
Dennis Kucinich, a former chair of a U.S. Congressional investigative subcommittee on government oversight, has noted that it is simply astonishing no one in Congress has been pushing to use its powers to subpoena senior American officials, such as the secretary of the Navy, to test Hersh’s version of events. As Kucinich observes, such subpoenas could be issued under Congress’s Article One, Section 8, Clause 18, providing “constitutional powers to gather information, including to inquire on the administrative conduct of office.”
Similarly, and even more extraordinarily, when a vote was called by Russia at the United Nations Security Council late last month to set up an independent international commission to investigate the blasts, the proposal was roundly rejected.
If adopted, the UN Secretary-General himself would have appointed expert investigators and aided their work with a large secretariat.
Three Security Council members, Russia, China and Brazil, voted in favor of the commission. The other 12 – the U.S. and its allies or small states it could easily pressure – abstained, the safest way to quietly foil the creation of such an investigative commission.
Excuses for rejecting an independent commission failed to pass the sniff test. The claim was that it would interfere with the existing investigations of Denmark, Sweden and Germany. And yet all three have demonstrated that they are in no hurry to reach a conclusion, arguing that they may need years to carry out their work. As previously noted, they have indicated great reluctance to cooperate. And last week, Sweden once again stated that it may never get to the bottom of the events in the Baltic Sea.
As one European diplomat reportedly observed of meetings between NATO policymakers, the motto is: “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” The diplomat added: “It’s like a corpse at a family gathering. It’s better not to know.”
It may not be so surprising that Western states are devoted to ignorance about who carried out a major act of international terrorism in blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, considering that the most likely culprit is the world’s only superpower and the one state that can make their lives a misery.
But what should be more peculiar is that Western media have shown precisely no interest in getting to the truth of the matter either. They have remained completely incurious to an event of enormous international significance and consequence.
It is not only that Hersh’s account has been ignored by the Western press as if it did not even exist. It is that none of the media appear to have made any effort to follow up with their own investigations to test his account for plausibility.
“ACT OF WAR”
Hersh’s investigation is filled with details that could be checked – and verified or rebutted – if anyone wished to do so.
He set out a lengthy planning stage that began in the second half of 2021. He names the unit responsible for the attack on the pipeline: the U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center, based in Panama City, Florida. And he explains why it was chosen for the task over the U.S. Special Operations Command: because any covert operation by the former would not need to be reported to Congress.
In December 2021, according to his highly placed informant, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan convened a task force of senior administration and Pentagon officials at the request of Biden himself. They agreed that the explosions must not be traceable back to Washington; otherwise, as the source noted: “It’s an act of war.”
The CIA brought in the Norwegians, stalwarts of NATO and strongly hostile to Russia, to carry out the logistics of where and how to attack the pipelines. Oslo had its own additional commercial interests in play, as the blasts would make Germany more dependent on Norwegian gas, as well as American supplies, to make up the shortfall from Nord Stream.
By March last year, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the precise site for the attack had been selected: in the Baltic’s shallow waters off Denmark’s Bornholm Island, where the sea floor was only 260ft below the surface, the four pipelines were close together and there were no strong tidal currents.
A small number of Swedish and Danish officials were given a general briefing about unusual diving activities to avoid the danger that their navies might raise the alarm.
The Norwegians also helped develop a way to disguise the U..S explosive charges so that, after they were laid, they would not be detected by Russian surveillance in the area.
The story no one wanted told. Seymour Hersh reveals how the US blew up the Nordstream gas pipelines, one of the great environmental disasters of our time. I'm guessing Hersh published on Substack because no establishment media outlet dared touch his expose https://t.co/B2IxQj5kuh
Next, the U.S. found the ideal cover. For more than two decades, Washington has sponsored an annual NATO naval exercise in the Baltic every June. The U.S. arranged that the 2022 event, Baltops 22, would take place close to Bornholm Island, allowing the divers to plant the charges unnoticed.
The explosives would be detonated through the use of a sonar buoy dropped by plane at the time of President Biden’s choosing. Complex arrangements had to be taken to make sure the explosives would not be accidentally triggered by passing ships, underwater drilling, seismic events or sea creatures.
Three months later, on September 26, the sonar buoy was dropped by a Norwegian plane, and a few hours later three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.
DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The Western media’s response to Hersh’s account has perhaps been the most revealing aspect of the entire saga.
It is not just that the establishment media have been so uniformly and remarkably reticent to dig deeper into making sense of this momentous crime – beyond making predictable, unevidenced accusations against Russia. It is that they have so obviously sought to dismiss Hersh’s account before making even cursory efforts to confirm or deny its specifics.
The knee-jerk pretext has been that Hersh has only one anonymous source for his claims. Hersh himself has noted that, as with other of his famous investigations, he cannot always refer to additional sources he uses to confirm details because those sources impose a condition of invisibility for agreeing to speak to him.
That should hardly be surprising when informants are drawn from a small, select group of Washington insiders and are at great risk of being identified – at great personal cost to themselves, given the U.S. administration’s proven track record of persecuting whistleblowers.
But the fact that this was indeed just a pretext from the establishment media becomes much clearer when we consider that those same journalists dismissive of Hersh’s account happily gave prominence to an alternative, highly implausible, semi-official version of events.
In what looked suspiciously like a coordinated publication in early March, The New York Times and Germany’s Die Zeitnewspapers printed separate accounts promising to solve “one of the central mysteries of the war in Ukraine.” The Times headline asked a question it implied it was about to answer: “Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?”
Instead, both papers offered an account of the Nord Stream attack that lacked detail, and any detail that was supplied was completely implausible. This new version of events was vaguely attributed to anonymous American and German intelligence sources – the very actors, in Hersh’s account, responsible both for carrying out and covering up the Nord Stream blasts.
In fact, the story had all the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign to distract from Hersh’s investigation. It threw the establishment media a bone: the chief purpose was to lift any pressure from journalists to pursue Hersh’s leads. Now they could scurry around, looking like they were doing their job as a “free press” by chasing a complete red herring supplied by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Which is why the story was widely reported, notably far more widely than Hersh’s much more credible account.
So what did the New York Times’ account claim? That a mysterious group of six people had hired a 50ft yacht and sailed off to Bornholm Island, where they had carried out a James Bond-style mission to blow up the pipelines. Those involved, it was suggested, were a group of “pro-Ukrainian saboteurs”– with no apparent ties to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who were keen to seek revenge on Russia for its invasion. They had used fake passports.
The Times further muddied the waters, reporting sources that claimed some 45 “ghost ships” had passed close to the site of the explosion when their transponders were not working.
The crucial point was that the story shifted attention away from the sole plausible possibility, the one underscored by Hersh’s source: that only a state actor could have carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. The highly sophisticated, extremely difficult operation needed to be concealed from other states, including Russia that were closely surveilling the area.
Now the establishment media was heading off on a completely different tangent. They were looking not at states – and most especially not the one with the biggest motive, the greatest capability and the proven opportunity.
Instead, they had an excuse to play at being reporters, visiting Danish yachting communities to ask if anyone remembered the implicated yacht, the Andromeda, or suspicious characters aboard it, and trying to track down the Polish company that hired the sailing boat. The media had the story they preferred: one that Hollywood would have created, of a crack team of Jason Bournes giving Moscow a good slapping and then disappearing into the night.
WELCOME MYSTERY
A month on, the media discussion is still exclusively about the mysterious yacht crew, though – after reaching a series of dead-ends in a story that was only ever meant to have dead-ends – establishment journalists are asking a few tentative questions. Though, let us note, most determinedly not questions about any possible U.S. involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper ran a story last week in which a German “security expert” wondered whether a group of six sailors was really capable of carrying out a highly complex operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines. That is something that might have occurred to a less credulous newspaper a month earlier when the Guardian simply regurgitated the Times’ disinformation story.
But despite the security expert’s skepticism, the Guardian is still not eager to get to the bottom of the story. It conveniently concludes that the “investigation” conducted by the Swedish public prosecutor, Mats Ljungqvist, will be unlikely ever to “yield a conclusive answer”.
Or as Ljungqvist observes: “Our hope is to be able to confirm who has committed this crime, but it should be noted that it likely will be difficult given the circumstances.”
Hersh’s account continues to be ignored by the Guardian – beyond a dismissive reference to several “theories” and “speculation” other than the laughable yacht story. The Guardian does not name Hersh in its report or the fact that his highly placed source fingered the U.S. for the Nord Stream sabotage. Instead, it notes simply that one theory – Hersh’s – has been “zeroing on a Nato Baltops 22 wargame two months before” the attack.
It’s all still a mystery for the Guardian – and a very welcome one by the tenor of its reports.
The Washington Post has been performing a similar service for the Biden administration on the other side of the Atlantic. A month on, it is using the yacht story simply to widen the enigma rather than narrow it down.
The paper reports that unnamed “law enforcement officials” now believe the Andromeda yacht was not the only vessel involved, adding: “The boat may have been a decoy, put to sea to distract from the true perpetrators, who remain at large, according to officials with knowledge of an investigation led by Germany’s attorney general.”
The Washington Post’s uncritical reporting surely proves a boon to Western “investigators”. It continues to build an ever more elaborate mystery, or “international whodunnit,” as the paper gleefully describes it. Its report argues that unnamed officials “wonder if the explosive traces – collected months after the rented boat was returned to its owners – were meant to falsely lead investigators to the Andromeda as the vessel used in the attack.”
The paper then quotes someone with “knowledge of the investigation”: “The question is whether the story with the sailboat is something to distract or only part of the picture.”
How does the paper respond? By ignoring that very warning and dutifully distracting itself across much of its own report by puzzling whether Poland might have been involved too in the blasts. Remember, a mysterious Polish company hired that red-herring yacht.
Poland, notes the paper, had a motive because it had long warned that the Nord Stream pipelines would make Europe more energy dependent on Russia. Exactly the same motive, we might note – though, of course, the Washington Post refuses to do so – that the Biden administration demonstrably had.
The paper does inadvertently offer one clue as to where the mystery yacht story most likely originated. The Washington Post quotes a German security official saying that Berlin “first became interested in the [Andromeda] vessel after the country’s domestic intelligence agency received a ‘very concrete tip’ from a Western intelligence service that the boat may have been involved in the sabotage”.
The German official “declined to name the country that shared the information” – information that helpfully draws attention away from any US involvement in the pipeline blasts and redirects it to a group of untraceable, rogue Ukraine sympathizers.
The Washington Post concludes that Western leaders “would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or allies were involved”. And, it seems the Western media – our supposed watchdogs on power – feel exactly the same way.
“PARODY” INTELLIGENCE
In a follow-up story last week, Hersh revealed that Holger Stark, the journalist behind Die Zeit’s piece on the mystery yacht and someone Hersh knew when they worked together in Washington, had imparted to him an interesting additional piece of information divulged by his country’s intelligence services.
Hersh reports: “Officials in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark had decided shortly after the pipeline bombings to send teams to the site to recover the one mine that has not gone off. [Holger] said they were too late; an American ship had sped to the site within a day or two and recovered the mine and other materials.”
Holger, Hersh says, was entirely uninterested in Washington’s haste and determination to have exclusive access to this critical piece of evidence: “He answered, with a wave of his hand, ‘You know what Americans are like. Always wanting to be first.’” Hersh points out: “There was another very obvious explanation.”
Hersh also spoke with an intelligence expert about the plausibility of the mystery yacht story being advanced by the New York Times and Die Zeit. He described it as a “parody” of intelligence that only fooled the media because it was exactly the kind of story they wanted to hear. He noted some of the most glaring flaws in the account:
Any serious student of the event would know that you cannot anchor a sailboat in waters that are 260 feet deep’ – the depth at which the four pipelines were destroyed – ‘but the story was not aimed at him but at the press who would not know a parody when presented with one.’”
Further:
You cannot just walk off the street with a fake passport and lease a boat. You either need to accept a captain who was supplied by the leasing agent or owner of the yacht, or have a captain who comes with a certificate of competency as mandated by maritime law. Anyone who’s ever chartered a yacht would know that.’ Similar proof of expertise and competence for deep sea diving involving the use of a specialized mix of gases would be required by the divers and the doctor.”
And:
How does a 49-foot sailboat find the pipelines in the Baltic Sea? The pipelines are not that big and they are not on the charts that come with the lease. Maybe the thought was to put the two divers into the water’– not very easy to do so from a small yacht – ‘and let the divers look for it. How long can a diver stay down in their suits? Maybe fifteen minutes. Which means it would take the diver four years to search one square mile.’”
The truth is that the Western press has zero interest in determining who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines because, just like Western diplomats and politicians, media corporations don’t want to know the truth if it cannot be weaponized against an official enemy state.
The Western media are not there to help the public monitor the centers of power, keep our governments honest and transparent, or bring to book those who commit state crimes. They are there to keep us ignorant and willing accomplices when such crimes are seen as advancing on the global stage the interests of Western elites – including the very transnational corporations that run our media.
Which is precisely why the Nord Stream blasts took place. The Biden administration knew not only that its allies would be too fearful to expose its unprecedented act of industrial and environmental terrorism but that the media would dutifully line up behind their national governments in turning a blind eye.
The very ease with which Washington has been able to carry out an atrocity – one that has caused a surge in the cost of living for Europeans, leaving them cold and out of pocket during the winter, and added considerably to existing pressures that have been gradually deindustrializing Europe’s economies – will embolden the U.S. to act in equally rogue ways in the future.
In the context of a Ukraine war in which there is the constant threat of a resort to nuclear weapons, where that could ultimately lead should be only too obvious.
Back in the 1970s I was part of the Field Trade Craft course for new Case Officers at the Central Intelligence Agency’s principal training facility, located at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. Peary was and still is referred to by one and all as “the Farm,” though it engaged in animal husbandry only in the most basic sense. One of the instructors had part of a poem by Rudyard Kipling displayed on his office door. It read:
The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes:
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to the toad
Some of the students began referring to themselves as “toads” and were expecting the worst from the instructors to bring them into conformity with Agency expectations, while they also identified the instructors as the butterflies who were telling them to shut up and play along if they wished to be certified to go overseas. Everyone knew it was a matter of perception of one’s role or status, with the students resigned to punishment or worse like the toads, while the instructors, whose viewpoints and expectations were quite different, could blithely assure their victims that everything was proceeding just as it should be.
That there will always be toads and butterflies engaged in national security issues is a given, while perceptions of what is important or significant will vary depending on one’s individual life and cultural experiences. Or, to put it another way, one’s basic views are not predetermined and will depend very much on which side of a fence one is standing on.
All of that said, I have recently returned from a three-week trip that included stops in seven countries in Eastern Europe. In preparation for the journey, I arranged for contact with a number of local journalists, politicians and academics in the various countries. Those whom I selected were generally determined by me to be active in the more conservative parties in their respective countries, providing something of a comfort zone for myself given my own inclinations. What I really wanted to know was how the war in Ukraine really was being perceived by both the national elites as well as by the ordinary citizens.
I expected responses that would be in sync with my own views, i.e. that the war was avoidable but had been demanded by both Britain and the US to weaken Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin; that all parties engaged at any level in the conflict should be calling for a cease fire and negotiations to end the fighting; and that Russia has legitimate national security concerns that must be addressed even while one is condemning the use of military force in this instance.
While there were some variations in the responses of my interlocutors, I quickly learned that the war in Ukraine, if not popular, was considered to be a necessary step to limit what was described repeatedly as an allegedly autocratic if not kleptocratic Putin’s desire to recreate the old Soviet Union, using military force as necessary. I energetically disputed that view on two levels: first, the Russia does not have the resources to entertain such an agenda, as the Ukraine fighting has demonstrated, and secondly, that Putin’s often cited comments relating to the “disastrous” dissolution of the Soviet Union clearly refer to the catastrophic looting of Russia’s resources that took place subsequently under Boris Yeltsin. Putin was not referring to a yearning to recreate the Warsaw Pact or anything like that.
Indeed, the anti-Russian sentiment surprised me among people who are, undeniably, on the front line of the conflict and should normally be wary of involvement. Only in Serbia, which has deep historical, cultural and religious ties to Russia, did a leading journalist tell me that his countrymen’s views of the Ukraine conflict are essential divided “fifty-fifty” with half of the nation and even some of its leaders supporting Ukraine’s defense. In other Eastern European countries, the viewpoint was much more decisively pro-Ukrainian. One Czech Republic academic described his country’s leaders as “heros” because they, joined by presidents from Poland and Slovenia, traveled to Kiev when the war started to pledge their personal support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Several contacts provided a more plausible reason for the tilt towards Ukraine: they wanted to prevent any return to Russian dominance of the region which just might lead to a return to Moscow’s centralized control and a possible adoption of the types of statecraft employed under the communist regimes set up by the Kremlin in the wake of the Second World War. They want to weaken Russia, whatever it takes, so that it can no longer play a dominant role in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
More to the point, they want hands off the prosperity that they have experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union slightly more than thirty years ago. Most of the nations in Eastern Europe are now visibly prosperous with expensive restaurants, chic hotels and rows of Italian and French branded shops in the downtown areas. Even when one sees the monstrous Stalinist apartment blocks defiling many urban areas while also witnessing evidence in rural areas of abandoned buildings and bullet holes in facades dating from the troubles in the 1990s, the impression was definitely upscale. I saw more expensive automobiles on my journey than I have ever seen elsewhere, to included the ubiquitous Mercedes and BMWs and also the much more exclusive Maseratis and Lamborghinis as well as a few Bentleys and Rolls Royces. Bucharest, the capital of Romania, has less than 3 million inhabitants who have registered 1.5 million automobiles. And, I noted, that streets and roads throughout the East were better maintained than they are in many parts of Joe Biden’s America.
Bear in mind that many people now living in Eastern Europe have direct and largely unfavorable memories of the economic and social failures dating to the time when Soviet-communist proxies ruled backed up by military interventions (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) when anyone stepped out of line. And the younger generation knows only free markets and relatively free elections and would be even less disposed towards wanting to return to the old ways as described by their parents. All that adds up to concern over a possibly irredentist Russia.
So, it would seem to me that it is fear of a reversion to something like “the specter haunting Europe” communism that appears to be what prevails and has shaped attitudes and perspectives, and communism historically speaking means Russia like it or not. I did indeed argue against judging today’s Russia by a standard of guilt by association with a discarded socio-economic concept, particularly as Russia is certainly at least comparable to most of Eastern Europe in terms of the freedom of elections and other fundamental liberties. And there is also the common bond of the Orthodox religion, which is the majority creed in most states in the region, even if one Slovak intellectual described to me the religiosity of his fellow countrymen as “they are all pagans.”
So, it is reasonable to suggest that some kind of amicable multilateral relationship would be preferred over an arrangement where a neocon driven hostile military alliance is confronting the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. But be that as it may, my trip opened up my eyes to the reality that Eastern Europeans have legitimate concerns over what Russia represents based on historical realities. It is undeniably a factor in how support for increased NATO/western intervention is lining up and, in that context, it should be noted that the Polish, Czech and Slovak governments have been leaders in providing weapons drawn from their own arsenals to the Ukrainians. One has to hope that at a certain point everyone will come to their senses and realize that killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians has been a pointless exercise that will only delay an inevitable negotiated resolution of the conflict.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 