Wagner PMC founder and chief Yevgeny Prigozhin tells Al Mayadeen English that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is beginning as the latter pushes toward Russia in a series of attacks on Russian targets.
The events taking place in Ukraine forebode a Ukrainian counteroffensive as Kiev ups its efforts, as was expected, Russian Wagner Private Military Group Yegevny Prigozhin said answering Al Mayadeen English’s questions on Thursday hours after Ukrainian attacks took place in Zaparozhye.
“I think that the events that are currently taking place at the front are the beginning of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, which is currently ramping up its efforts as expected,” Prigozhin told Al Mayadeen English in an audio recording.
In response to a question about Russia’s expected performance regarding the long-awaited counteroffensive set to be carried out by Ukraine in the spring, Prigozhin said “We will see in the near future… how Russia will deal with it. I hope it does well, I’m counting on it.”
The Ukrainian attacks conducted on Zaparozhye were preceded by artillery strikes.
Moreover, the attacks, according to drone footage taken Wednesday during the Ukrainian offensive on the front, saw the usage of at least two German-made Leopard 2 tanks, as well as several armored personnel carriers, including US-made M113s.
The images represent the first visual confirmation that Ukrainian forces are employing Leopard 2 tanks in active combat.
It is worth noting that Wagner PMC took the lion’s share in the year-long battle leading to the full control of Russia over the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, taking thousands of casualties in the process, Prighozin said earlier.
Wagner’s shows African people how to fight against aggression
Responding to a question posed by Al Mayadeen English about Wagner’s efforts in Africa, the company’s founder underlined that Wagner plays a major role in Africa, saying it shows the African people that they can fight against the aggression of foreign powers.
“PMC Wagner shows the African peoples that they can fight against external aggression, as well as against the actions of terrorists and gangs in Africa,” Progizhin told Al Mayadeen English. “Wagner proves that African peoples can be protected.”
He went on to criticize the United Nations’ effort in Africa, saying the UN and other states were not engaged in the continent in this manner. “They only think about how to suck natural resources from the African subsoil.”
Wagner is present in Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali, among other African states whose governments asked for the help of the Russian PMC.
France has been deeply entrenched in Mali militarily since 2013 under the pretext of countering terrorist activities in the Sahel region after the 2011 intervention in Libya by NATO forces. The country achieved full independence after French troops withdrew from its country on August 15, 2022, following pressure from the Malian government.
Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told Al Mayadeen that France and all its partners needed to realize that Africans were perfectly capable of running their countries and choosing their partners based on their national interests.
Africa is open to establishing partners with anyone in the whole world, and the United States is an important partner, but it must take into consideration the interests and sovereignty of African states, the top Malian diplomat said.
Meanwhile, Diop underlined that Russia was a strategic partner of Mali’s, as Moscow supplied Bamako with everything it asked for within the framework of its confrontation against extremist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
Wagner distinct from Western PMCs
Asked about the difference between Wagner and other, Western PMCs, Prigozhin underlined that Western PMCs are private military companies, while the name just stuck with Wagner, but it is different from Western PMCs.
“PMC Wagner is a full-fledged army with aircraft, helicopters, air defense, and so on,” he underlined.
“If it is necessary to stop a conflict or someone’s aggression somewhere, Wagner PMC can easily deal with the issue in territories comparable to the territory of the Congo, Sudan, and other large African countries.”
Wagner is known for its efforts in Ukraine alongside the Russian armed forces and in other states throughout Africa alongside the government forces.
As part of the war in Ukraine, several US PMCs were seen to be on the ground in the country. Following the beginning of the war in Ukraine, former American marines established a private military company in the US, Mozart Group, which aims to train Ukrainian soldiers and participate in the ongoing fight against Russian forces.
Mozart deployed on the frontlines in Ukraine three teams of US veterans, each team accumulating nearly $100,000 of expenses monthly according to the group’s leader ex-US Marine officer Andy Milburn, The Intercept reported.
Reports say the head of Mozart Milburn managed the group “in a manner which has caused senior Ukrainian military officers to remark ‘can’t he go home and stop saving our country.’”
Moreover, Blackwater‘s founder, a private mercenary who has massacred scores of Iraqis and is despised in Iraq more than the US soldiers themselves, established earlier another private military company called Reflex Responses – or R2 – after he sold Blackwater to investors as an escape from controversy.
The Wagner PMC, also known as the Wagner Group, is a Russian paramilitary organization or a private military company founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin that operates closely with the Russian Armed Forces that first emerged in 2014 when it helped Russia with the reunification effort with Crimea.
Wagner also operated and still operates in the Donbass People’s Republics, namely Donetsk and Lugansk, as part of Russia’s effort in the region.
As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?
Lindsey Graham is of course a shame on the United States. The fact that Graham’s pernicious and disgraceful remarks barely caused any criticism from Western governments or media illustrates just how endemic and “normalized” is their Russophobia.
It would be easy to dismiss American Senator Lindsey Graham for the buffoon that he undoubtedly is. His whining high-pitched voice is compensated by his affected macho talk and habitual hawkish support for U.S. militarism. There’s never been a war that the South Carolina Republican doesn’t enthusiastically support, like a giddy schoolgirl in a cheerleader go-go troupe. He’s a puffball figure with sociopathic tendencies.
On a visit to Kiev last Friday, Graham appeared to say in a video that military support for Ukraine and “dying Russians” was the best money the United States has ever spent.
After a furious reaction from Moscow, it transpired that the video statement had been edited by the Kiev regime to make Graham’s words sound more belligerent and offensive. A longer video of his meeting with President Vladimir Zelensky showed Graham lauding military aid to Ukraine as “the best money the U.S. has ever spent”. A secondary comment about “Russians dying” was indeed spoken by the senator, but it appears to have been said in a different, less gloating context.
In any case, the controversy over what Graham actually meant to say is beside the point.
The unerring upshot of the senator’s remarks is that he is giving moral and material support to an odious regime that glorifies Nazism and the mass killing of Russian people. That’s the real point.
Senator Graham, like his deceased friend and Republican senator John McCain before him, is a frequent visitor to Kiev and a key Washington enabler of the Russophobic regime that seized power in 2014, through a CIA-backed violent coup.
Within days of his latest reprehensible remarks encouraging the war with Russia, the Kiev regime launched drone attacks on civilian centers in Moscow and in the border regions of Belgorod and Bryansk. A ground invasion by NATO-armed militants was also repelled by Russian defense forces but not before the raiders fired on residential homes, injuring several civilians. Houses in the town of Shebekino were set ablaze by rocket attacks.
Not a word of condemnation about these attacks was uttered by Graham or any other Western politician or media outlet.
What is deplorable – and disturbing – is the intensifying rhetorical green light that the United States and its NATO partners are giving to the Ukrainian forces to wage an increasingly terroristic campaign against Russia.
The Kiev regime – consistent with its Nazi ideology – has been targeting Russian civilians since it seized power in 2014. The Donbass territories, which are now officially joined with the Russian Federation, were subjected to eight years of constant fire by the NATO-trained and equipped Azov Battalion and numerous other NeoNazi paramilitary outfits that make up the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That aggression was never much reported by Western media, but it was a crucial factor in why Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention on February 24 last year.
Moscow claims with credibility that it is not targeting Ukrainian civilians and that its aim is to eradicate the Nazi formations in that country so that they no longer can inflict aggression on Russian people.
By contrast, the Kiev regime is seen to willfully fire on civilian centers in Donbass and more recently in pre-war Russian territory. The regime openly declares a policy of assassinating Russian public figures, as well as mass killing of civilians. The continual shelling by Kiev’s forces of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant – the largest civilian facility in Europe – is another indicator of the reckless terroristic practices.
The Biden administration has pumped nearly $40 billion of military aid into Ukraine since February 2022. If we add the aid from NATO’s 30 other members, the figure is nearly $65 billion. Commensurate with the increasing lethality and long-range caliber of the weapons is the rhetoric countenancing strikes on Russian territory. Western apologists talk about “Ukraine’s right to self-defense” but this is a gross distortion of the historic aggression by the NATO-backed Kiev regime, and who is the real offender.
President Joe Biden and his senior Democrat aides have moved from categorically – and ostensibly – forbidding Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory to implicit approval of such strikes. The White House’s national security spokesman John Kirby this week used weasel words to say that the United States does not tell the Kiev regime “where not to strike and how to conduct its operations”.
British foreign minister James Cleverly went further and asserted Ukraine has the right to launch military attacks on the Russian Federation. Recall that one of his Conservative colleagues, armed forces minister James Heappey, caused controversy last year when he called for strikes “deep inside” Russia even with British-supplied weapons. Such views are now becoming openly spoken without restraint, and take on a graver connotation given the supply last month of British Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
There is an absolutely nefarious and cynical use of words by the Americans, British and other NATO powers. The Kiev regime is a vile reincarnation of Nazi ideology that has shown willingness and desire to deploy terrorism without bounds. Its Western sponsors are formulating deceptive rationales that are in effect an authorization to escalate a war of aggression on Russia. The conflict in Ukraine has ineluctably become an undeclared NATO war on Russia.
Returning to the buffoonish Lindsey Graham who oozes arrogance and hubris like whipped cream from an outsized doughnut. He is of course a shame on the United States. But he is merely a symptom of a more prevalent diseased Western mindset. The fact that Graham’s pernicious and disgraceful remarks barely caused any criticism from Western governments or media illustrates just how endemic and “normalized” is their Russophobia. The lack of restraint bodes ill for any diplomatic way out of an ever-increasing confrontation between NATO and Russia.
A sinister disease is thriving in the West’s political classes. Such a disease would have been only a few decades ago denounced as “fascism” and “Nazism”. Today, shockingly, it is publicly articulated and blindly accepted.
According to a Russian law enforcement source, the Security Service of Ukraine went after whoever they accused of cooperating with Russia in the region in 2022.
A Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik, on Tuesday, citing sources in the Ukrainian police, that torture chambers were opened, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), in order to elicit testimony from persons who had allegedly “collaborated” with Russian personnel while the city was under Russian control between March and November 2022.
According to the source, the torture chambers were established in two district police offices, Dniprovsky and Komsomolsky.
It was also noted that while the Dniprovsky department employed Ukrainians, the second location, however, was exclusively set for the use of foreign mercenaries who speak only English, Polish, and Georgian.
The source said a former business assistant, Vladimir Malina, who made the choice to remain in Kherson after the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region was later killed in one of the torture chambers in the Dniprovsky police department.
“[He] was kept in the torture chamber of the Dniprovsky district department, [he was] brutally beaten, the next day, he died in the cell. In order to hide his death, for three days, two [former] employees of the Russian humanitarian center [in Kherson], Roman Gavrilyuk and Igor Gurov, who were detained with him, were tortured and forced to write an explanation that Vladimir Malina was released together with them,” the source said.
Malina was but one of many who lost their lives at the hands of SBU members in torture chambers, said the source, who explained that the Ukrainians had utilized a network of agents that identifies, arrests, and tortures people that they believed cooperated with Moscow forces.
Moreover, the source told Sputnik, “Activists, SBU agents from among local residents, who remained in the city after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops in March 2022, are engaged in the denunciation of ‘collaborators.’ Thanks to the information received from our source in the National Police of Ukraine, we became aware of the names of some of them, as well as those who suffered from their actions.”
According to Sputnik‘ssource, Russian law enforcement authorities have now acquired the names of persons who applied for positions in the Russian administration on the SBU’s orders with the aim to conduct surveillance missions against Moscow.
It is worth noting that Russia established control over Kherson soon after the launch of the military operation in Ukraine. In October, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye were incorporated into Russia following referenda.
In November, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the complete withdrawal of Russian troops and hardware from the right bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson Region, citing the need to build up defenses on the left bank. Soon after that, the Ukrainian forces entered Kherson.
Russia places Ukraine army chiefs on its wanted list
The Russian Interior Ministry on Tuesday announced that it placed Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian armed forces General Valery Zaluzhny on its wanted list.
“Basis for the search: wanted under the article of the Criminal Code,” the Ministry’s website indicated.
The state-run RIA news agency later reported that the Russian Interior Ministry had also added Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, to the list, citing the same search basis.
It is noteworthy that in late December 2022, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against Zaluzhny, as well as other Ukrainian military commanders under the article of using prohibited means and methods of warfare.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry underlined in a statement over Ukrainian drone attacks that targeted Moscow that Russia reserves the right to take “the harshest measures in response to terrorist attacks of the Kiev regime.”
“These attacks were planned and carried out by the neo-Nazi Kiev regime, for which the use of methods of terrorist attacks has become a sinister practice. Its representatives have long and openly called for ‘retribution strikes’ on Moscow,” the statement stressed.
The Ministry pointed out that the Western backing for Kiev was driving the Ukrainian government to engage in increasingly hazardous behavior, such as terrorism, violations of international humanitarian law, and war crimes.
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.
Related Videos
Putin’s last warning! A terrifying report about a nuclear weapon being struck in Ukraine after sending F16 fighters to Zelensky
Urgent, the Ukrainian 93rd Brigade turns against Zelinsky and the army commander because of Bakhmut’s loss
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.”
Related Videos
Bakhmut in the line of fire.. Did Putin defeat the West with his right arm?
Zelinsky hides, ashamed of the West, after the loss of Bakhmut..Dr. Mahmoud al-Afandi, a researcher in Russian affairs, explains
Putin’s last warning! A terrifying report about a nuclear weapon being struck in Ukraine after sending F16 fighters to Zelensky
US media is reporting that Ukraine has five months to show demonstrable and significant gains or Western allies fear financial and military support from the US may wane and pressure will mount on the country to enter into peace negotiations.
US media reported on the matter, citing several senior European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The United States is entering an election cycle and it is important, one European official says, that the American public can be sold on the idea that the more than $113 billion in taxpayer aid given to Ukraine has been effective and “to prove that all of those aid packages have been successful in terms of Ukrainian advances.”
US officials contend that the current $48 billion package which was authorized last year, is enough to sustain Ukraine for roughly five more months, but European allies are concerned future aid packages from the US will come close to matching that level.
Nevertheless, earlier this month Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said his country needed more Western weapons before he could order the start of Ukraine’s much-hyped counter-offensive. He visited four NATO nations this week, Italy, Germany, France, and the UK, securing billions in more aid, but European support is still a fraction of what the US has been providing.
The US government has also hit its self-imposed debt ceiling, which has led to a debate on domestic spending. Some social programs may be cut in the negotiations, which would make selling aid packages to the American taxpayer even more difficult if Ukraine cannot be presented as a winning bet.
US President Joe Biden has, publicly at least, remained steadfast in his support for Ukraine. Before heading to the G7 Summit on Wednesday, a White House official said that “President Biden has been very clear about supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
However, Biden’s likely opponent in 2024, former President Donald Trump, said last week he didn’t think of the war “in terms of winning and losing,” and is instead focused on “getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.” He also would not commit to sending more aid packages and promised to end the war “in 24 hours.”
And there have been hints from other Republicans that support for Ukraine is not unlimited. While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy [R-CA] said he will “continue to support” aid to Ukraine, he also said previously that it won’t come in the form of a “blank check.”
Support among the American public for Ukraine has also been slipping. Polls have shown support as low as 48% in January and while other polls have had that number over 50% in more recent months, it is still far from last summer when 73% of Americans supported military aid to Ukraine.
Without significant gains by the Ukrainian armed forces, it is unlikely that trend will reverse itself.
“If we get to September and Ukraine has not made significant gains, then the international pressure on [the West] to bring them to negotiations will be enormous,” one official said.
Both the UN General Assembly and G20 summit take place in September. Both events would represent an opportunity to get both sides to the negotiating table.
Several countries have offered to act as mediators, including China, Brazil and Turkey, but Zelensky has rejected mediation since the beginning of the conflict when Ukraine pulled out of negotiations mediated by Turkey. On Saturday, he rejected another offer from Pope Francis for mediation.
But much of Ukraine’s sustained capabilities depend on Western support, and another European official said they “can’t keep the same level of assistance forever,” though he felt another year or two may be possible.
America gives Ukraine 5 months before cutting support, disrupting its access to the F-16, and strikes targeting the Crimean railways
379 _ A radioactive cloud from the detonation of depleted uranium missile stores in Ukraine and the completion of control over Bakhmut
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.
The Chinese are not only fully awake but fully cognisant of the Anglo-Saxons’ wiles in the debt, and semiconductor sectors, as well as in honey, Hello Kitty and all others.
“Let China sleep. For when she wakes, the world will tremble”. Although The Dictionnaire Napoléon attributes this apothegm not to the great Napoleon (who loved a good bon mot almost as much as he loved a good battle) but to British actor David Niven playing the British Ambassador during the Boxer rebellion in the 1963 Hollywood blockbuster55 days at Peking, it matters not.
China has arrived and she is shaking up the world to a degree not even her Japanese neighbour achieved during Japan’s recent years of economic glory. That being so, we must gauge the force of this Godzilla who, horror of NATO horrors, is not only brokering peace in the Middle East but, more to the heart of this essay, is honey-laundering atop a mountain of debt that has our NATO overlords sweating bricks.
First stop is honey. China has agreed to annually import some 50,000 tonnes of honey from sanctions-struck Iran, which needs every nickel and dime it can scrape together. Because the Iranian bee industry, as this informative article explains, has huge upside potential, I am happy China is helping Iran’s 140,000 beekeepers stay afloat. Whereas in Western countries, bee-keeping is generally a side product some farmers engage in, in Syria, and I imagine, in Iran, bee-keepers follow their nomadic bees about as they migrate from one locale to the other; as Iran, for example, has over four times the amount of flower species Western Europe has Iran, like Syria, is a veritable heaven on earth for bees. Although NATO’s Syrian war of extermination has severely disrupted Syria’s bees and Syria’s bee-keepers, this Sino-Iranian deal shows there is hope for the bee-keepers of Iran, Iraq and Syria and, for that, I could not be happier.
Allied to that, China, the world’s largest honey producer, is accused of dumping its own honey onto the international honey market and thereby undercutting the EU’s 60,0000 bee producers and, crucially, Ukraine, against which Western countries have no hope of competing, at least on price.
But, in China’s defence, it must be said that such activities are part and parcel of today’s international “rules based order” systems of trade. Here, for example, is a report of Irish farmers managing Saudi Arabia’s massive cattle farms. Global beef production has changed and one either goes for the quantity that Saudi Arabia and Bill Gates’ own mega farms represent or one goes for quality, for such things as Kobe beef, Irish whiskey and French luxury goods.
Irish whiskey, which is a much finer product than the cough mixtures sister Scotland palms off to an unsuspecting world, is important to our analysis as Ukraine’s rotund Ambassador to Ireland has demanded Ireland boycott its own Irish whiskey, boycotting being a tactic the Irish not only invented but excelled at. Leaving aside that ignoramus and all other considerations, if Ireland can grab back some of the market in China (and Russia) from the Scots, that would be a good thing because China, whether the CIA likes it or not, is the new Roaring 20s Japan.
That means the Chinese have a lot of money to splurge on Irish whiskey, French luxury goods and Hello Kitty. As the Japanese, during their golden years, accounted for over 70% of Louis Vuitton’s global sales, Irish whiskey producers, French luxury goods’ makers, Iranian beekeepers and the custodians of Japan’s kawaii culture cannot ignore China.
The Chinese pay for all their Hello Kitty merchandise, their Scottish cough mixtures and their French perfumes by exporting stuff, things like bullet trains that they reversed-engineered from Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Because China is growing so fast, there are opportunities galore there in everything from honey and Kobe beef to Volkswagen cars and aircraft carriers, all of which China, with its reverse-engineering hacks, can pay for with its export surpluses or by taking on some debt.
As with honey, so also is China a major agricultural producer in her own right and her farms range from the very primitive to state-of-the-art wonders that match anything the Netherlands, or even Bill Gates’ sinister mega-ranches have to offer. China’s main constraint in this respect is its waters are in the wrong place and it is not at all clear that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, its traditional water source, will cover its future needs.
To tackle that and countless other development bottlenecks China, to accommodate the growing expectations of her countless masses, must invest heavily on a scale the world has never previously witnessed. And it must borrow heavily too as borrowing is a means of spreading investments one might not otherwise be able to afford over longer terms.
And that brings us to China: The Root of Madness, the CIA’s 1967 Cold War documentary “explaining” China through the CIA’s prism. But China must be explained through a Chinese, not an American prism and, if CIA spy Theodore H White, who produced that garbage, had bothered to read Chairman Mao, he would have come across far more references to ancient Chinese dynasties than he would to Karl Marx or Freddy Engels.
Because White’s Anglo-Saxons fret far too much about China’s debt policies rather than their own, we will now compare and contrast one with the other. Traditionally, there were two basic economic systems, the German-Japanese system where banks and borrowing were the financial engines of their sure but steady growth and the Anglo-American system where the riskier, roller-coaster stock market ruled the roost. China’s approach to debt, yet again, is best described as Japan’s on steroids.
In the United States, to coin a Napoleonic bon mot, debt has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. The vultures’ Klondyke that was payday lending, where the Anglo-Saxon poor, living from pay cheque to pay cheque, paid unsustainable loan-sharking rates to their creditors, has been replaced with predatory smart phone apps, where poor Americans are now reduced to buying their meals on credit and paying through the nose for them, as Uncle Sam catches them in micro debt traps from which there is no escape.
At the macro international level, African and other nations have long been stuck in a similarly slick debt trap they too have no means of escaping, not least because the IMF and the World Bank, their supposed saviours, were tasked ab ovo with keeping them enslaved to Uncle Sam and his Anglo-Saxon partners in crime.
Whatever one may think about the Bible, Proverbs 22:7: gets it right when it proclaims that “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender”. That has certainly been the case in Africa, as it is now in tiny Ireland, which was forced, almost at gunpoint, to take on over 40% of the EU’s debt, and Ukraine, which is currently fighting Russia on a maxed-out credit card.
That credit card will have to be cleared by Ukraine handing over its crown jewels to BlackRock, Vanguard and its other creditors and by paying interest on the mountains of debt it has racked up to fight its unwinnable war. Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Halliburton and Uncle Sam’s other seasoned vultures are already in advanced discussions to run Ukraine’s energy industry and the leprechaun vultures of Vichy Ireland have pledged to exploit (“rebuild”, as they call it) Ukraine’s Rivne Oblast region as part of their reward for propping up Zelensky’s rump Reich and sniggering at those tens of thousands of young Ukrainians slaughtered to make these scams possible.
Rustem Umerov, who heads Ukraine’s State Property Fund (SPF), claims there are more than 3,500 companies which are listed as state-owned, with almost 1,800 of them bankrupt and non-functional. The list for a privatisation fire-sale to Zelensky’s Western allies includes distilleries and grain elevators, which could be of interest to investors, as well as hundreds of abandoned facilities, which will be given away for nickels on the dollar. Umerov is hoping to earn over $400 million by selling an elite set of companies ranging from a fertilizer producer to utilities, smelters and an insulin maker. Ammonia maker Odessky Pryportovy Zavod, titanium producer United Mining, Zaporozhye Titanium-Magnesium Plant, insulin manufacturer Indar, and power generator Centrenergo PJSC will be among the first to be sold at knock down prices and up to $200 million of state-owned land is ear-marked to follow shortly afterwards. Because Russian speakers have no rights in Ukraine, the Demurinsky Mining and Processing Plant, which develops reserves of titanium-zirconium sands and which is owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Shelkov, is also scheduled to be sold. Rusal’s Nikolaev alumina refinery is also scheduled for “privatisation”, as is the confiscated property of Russians Vladimir Yevtushenkov and Oleg Deripaska.
The Chinese system, with its supposed Muslim, Tibetan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Hello Kitty issues, operates a trifle differently from Zelensky’s Ukrainian gangsters and there is no real point in getting our Chinese-made knickers in a twist about any of it. All of NATO’s faux Chinese concerns are blowbacks from the growth of China‘s economy and the end of the easy money that flowed from America’s property and dot.com bubbles. Because Easy Street is over, the Yanks must now re-discover The Zen of Working Hard even though, like their European vassals, they are no longer up to the task. The Chinese, like the Japanese workers of Toyota or the Koreans of Kia Motor Works, just plod on and on, accumulating wealth, Iranian honey and other delights for their children and, given her demographics, her children’s children. And good on them.
This is not to say that every Chinese, Japanese or Korean citizen has been a winner but their systems have been designed to give the greatest possible opportunities they can to the greatest number of their citizens. Though the Chinese love gambling, they have not followed Uncle Sam’s casino capitalism model but, like the post-War Japanese, they have instead worked hard and likewise pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.
And, just as Japan was once the major player in long-term sovereign debt, so now has that poisoned chalice passed to Beijing. If Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Zambia and Grenada wish to escape from the debt burdens Uncle Sam has saddled them with, they must look to Beijing. And while China has played hard-ball, they have been nowhere nearly as harsh as Elliott Investment Management and other American critics of China that picked Africa cleaner than might a flock of ravenous vultures.
But what of China, with its sweet tooth for Iranian honey, its Scottish cough mixtures and its Hello Kitty regalia? The Chinese government is tasked with allowing its citizens enjoy such fruits of their labour, whilst maintaining its armed forces to defend its citizens and instituting a system that allows China earn the wherewithal to pay for all such frivolities. Given China accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, that is a huge task, human resource and financial management on truly Biblical scales the world has never previously witnessed.
And, as with Japan during its golden years debt, albeit with Chinese characters, is an integral part of that process. Though personal, institutional and government debt in China are all huge, should we really be as concerned as our narcissistic Anglo-Saxon overlords are about it?
I think not. Debt, the Anglo-Saxon economists tell us, offers us more choice, the ability, for example, to get a mortgage loan on a house, rather than forever renting or living in a roadside wigwam. Debt, lots of it, allows Americans to send their kids to College which, depending on what they study, may or may not be a good investment. Of course, it also allows the Yanks to buy lots of Chinese goods from Walmart but let’s just take that as a given of Americans’ consumer fixations.
All the more so as China is also buying into the consumer craze. Chinese citizens are even hiring American women to bear their children which the CIA’s Heritage Foundation believe is a national security risk. Although it is fine and dandy for Americans to rent Ukrainian wombs, the burgeoning Chinese-American “rent-a-womb” industry, in which ageing Chinese couples draft fertile American women to give birth to offspring with U.S. citizenship is, they say, not playing to the CIA’s rules based order, whose lack of logic China’s economic ascent has placed under immense strain.
Surrogate babies are just one symptom. America is not only one gigantic debt mountain but its debt markets dwarf its stock markets, which are the world’s biggest. The Japanese (again) long saw this and that there were, for them, easy pickings to be had by lending to American states and cities on the correct presumption that the U.S. government would not allow those states and cities to go bankrupt. The Japanese who, like the Koreans and Chinese, are diligent savers, have been keeping the U.S. economy afloat for decades now with their soft loans which, like all loans, must be paid back eventually.
But what of the Chinese? U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen has acknowledged the threat China poses to U.S. hegemony (the rules’ based order as the Anglo Saxons call it) and the need to contain China by sanctions, by controlling intellectual property rights and by bad-mouthing them in NATO’s media over human rights and the plight of panda bears.
This is, again, a re-run of America’s post oil crisis attack on Japan because Japan has the art of car-making down to a tee. There is simply no way the Americans, the Germans or the Scandinavians can compete with the Japanese auto makers or, indeed, the Chinese, who are not only the new Japanese but who have entire armies of engineers improving the efficiency of cars and everything else they produce.
And that includes Taiwanese microchips, which Uncle Sam clings to as a drowning man might cling to a straw. As no country, from the Sumerians of antiquity to the Anglo-Saxons of our own era, has managed to monopolise a particular technology forever, Taiwanese microchips are, as the late Chairman Mao might have put it, a competitive paper tiger, childish Japanese origami that will vanish with a gust of divine wind.
Uncle Sam thinks differently and has ordered its Taiwanese and Korean colonies to stop selling semiconductor chips to China. America has also demanded that German companies Merck, and BASF, which supply Asian chip-makers with critical chemicals for production, follow the example of the Dutch who, on the Yanks’ orders, have severely restricted exports of their semi-conductors to the Middle Kingdom.
Though NATO, like Samson of old, hopes these export restrictions will cripple China’s ability to develop advanced technologies, as well as its capability to produce semiconductors, the tide of modern history, where competitive advantages cannot be held for long, suggest this pathetic boycotting will fail. Despite China being Berlin’s most important trading partner for the seventh year in a row now, because Germany remains a grovelling slave to America, we can assume the Pentagon will get their way here and further damage Germany (and the Netherlands). Talk about global supply chain hara kiri by those emasculated oafs!
NATO should, of course, have let China’s semiconductor industry sleep. Beijing has launched a national security review into Micron Dram, one of three dominant players in the global memory chip market alongside South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. As with Louis Vuitton, so also is it with Dram, where mainland China and Hong Kong generates 25 per cent of its $31bn annual revenue. If Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol accedes to Uncle Sam’s request to ban the sale of their microchips to China, then he is even more stupid than any Irish sniveller who boycotts Irish whiskey on the word of the obese Ukrainian grifter, who has the gig of loud-mouthed Ambassador to Vichy Ireland.
Although the Pentagon believes that their competitive edge in microchips will stave off the Chinese dragon, that is not where the true fight is. The fact of the matter is the United States and its puppet allies long ago exported the whole logistics chain to China and thereby made China the world’s logistical hub, its Middle Kingdom if you will. Not only is that almost impossible to undo but there are over a billion Chinese who have a vested interest in maintaining that emerging status quo that so upsets our Anglo-Saxon friends.
Gold, by way of illustration of that latter point, is the easiest of metals to work with and it is the first metal mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 2:11-12). And, though gold jewellery is almost universally popular, the North Italians are the world’s best at fabricating gold, simply because they have long held the logistical hubs, even from long before Romulus and Remus founded Rome.
Although American puppets like Ursula von der Leyen can threaten hell and damnation on the Chinese economy, German and French automakers are making more coin by producing cars in China than they are in Europe. Why? Because China has the logistical hubs and one part of China is not squabbling with another for the right to produce hub caps, as the various European states do with each other. Europe is an organisational mess and China, as with Japan’s Hello Kitty and auto industries, is not.
And, when we ask whether the Biden family’s control of the semiconductor industry can stop China, we have to conclude that it cannot and, again, Japan shows us why. When the Europeans first reached Japan, they brought muskets with them to The Land of the Rising Sun where such a technology was unknown but where the Europeans were amazed that Japanese steel was far superior to anything they had previously encountered in Borrell’s European garden.
The Japanese, who had never previously clapped eyes on a musket, not only solved the crucial European problem of how to stop rain destroying the gun-powder but, within six months of first clapping eyes on them, were exporting muskets throughout the rest of Eastern Asia. Following the 1904/5 Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese determined that they would have to match the German Leica company in terms of lenses. Not only did the Japanese match them but they far out-paced them in less than half of the time they had allocated to that objective. If the Americans think they can stop the Chinese semiconductor tide, they best import some more Chinese or Japanese brains because it is plain as day they have a critical shortage of grey matter, as well as a profound ignorance on how inter-connected the intermediate industries of China, Korea and Japan are.
The Chinese economy, their national pay packet if you will, continues to increase, by an impressive 4.5% in the first quarter of 2023, as it happens, meaning it is in a better position to pay off or roll over any outstanding debt and, of course, to buy more whiskey, more French perfumes and more Hello Kitty kitsch.
Yankee land, meanwhile, just prints more dollar bills and spends a staggering $500 billion annually servicing their debt, even as they imagine China would not develop a debt market of their own and thereby sink the American smoke and mirrors economy. For the fact of the matter is China’s debt is not a problem and will not be a problem as long as China can manage it. And so far, as with Japan, there is no sign of a major crisis. For the Good Ship China, it seems to be steady as she goes and to hell with Moody’s and the other partisan naysayers.
To illustrate China’s strength, let’s once again turn our eyes towards Japan, whose currency is the yen. Upon hearing that yen meant circle in English, American war lord Douglas MacArthur decreed that there would be 360 yen to the Yankee dollar. It is currently trading at 135 to the dollar, which is well within its recent trading band. The Chinese yuan is at 7 to the dollar and it too is within recent trading bands. China, however, is in a much stronger position than the U.S. or any of its satrapies to push the yuan, and therefore the dollar, any way it pleases. The boot is, in other words, increasingly on the Chinese and not the NATO foot.
Here, in conclusion, is 1900 footage of a French damsel in Saigon throwing Vietnamese children grain, like they were foraging chickens. The Anglo-Saxons should know that those days are, thanks to the armed might of South East Asians and their allies, gone and, thanks to the economic might of those countries, they are not returning. The United States, together with its German, Dutch and other vassals, best acknowledge and live with that fact or be prepared to take a turn at foraging themselves when their own stupidity collapses their own side of the global economic system. As for the Chinese, they are not only fully awake but fully cognisant of the Anglo-Saxons’ wiles in the debt, and semiconductor sectors, as well as in honey, Hello Kitty and all others.
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 its 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.
In 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on ‘the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists’ to discuss the ‘rapid crumbling of capitalism’ and the beckoning of another war. They were electric events which, according to one account, were attended by 3,500 members of the public, with more than a thousand turned away.
Arthur Miller, Myra Page, Lillian Hellman, and Dashiell Hammett warned that fascism was rising, often disguised, and writers and journalists were responsible for speaking out. Telegrams of support from Thomas Mann, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, C Day Lewis, Upton Sinclair and Albert Einstein were read out.
The journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke up for the homeless and unemployed and ‘all of us under the shadow of violent great power.’
Martha, who became a close friend, told me later over her customary glass of Famous Grouse and soda: ‘The responsibility I felt as a journalist was immense. I had witnessed the injustices and suffering delivered by the Depression, and I knew, we all knew, what was coming if silences were not broken.’
Her words echo across the silences today: they are silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear. Let me give you one example:
On 7 March, the two oldest newspapers in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, published several pages on ‘the looming threat’ of China. They coloured the Pacific Ocean red. Chinese eyes were martial, on the march and menacing. The Yellow Peril was about to fall down as if by the weight of gravity.”
DOG WHISTLES AND AMERICAN POWER
No logical reason was given for an attack on Australia by China. A ‘panel of experts’ presented no credible evidence: one of them is a former director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a front for the Defence Department in Canberra, the Pentagon in Washington, the governments of Britain, Japan and Taiwan and the West’s war industry.
‘Beijing could strike within three years,’ they warned. ‘We are not ready.’ Billions of dollars are to be spent on American nuclear submarines, but that, it seems, is not enough. ‘Australia’s holiday from history is over’: whatever that might mean.
There is no threat to Australia, none. The faraway ‘lucky’ country has no enemies, least of all China, its largest trading partner. Yet China-bashing that draws on Australia’s long history of racism towards Asia has become something of a sport for the self-ordained ‘experts.’ What do Chinese-Australians make of this? Many are confused and fearful.
The authors of this grotesque piece of dog-whistling and obsequiousness to American power are Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, ‘national security reporters’ I think they are called. I remember Hartcher from his Israeli government-paid jaunts. The other one, Knott, is a mouthpiece for the suits in Canberra. Neither has ever seen a war zone and its extremes of human degradation and suffering.
‘How did it come to this?’ Martha Gellhorn would say if she were here. ‘Where on earth are the voices saying no? Where is the comradeship?’
“WHERE ON EARTH ARE THE VOICES SAYING NO?”
The voices are heard in the samizdat of this website and others. In literature, the likes of John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, and George Orwell are obsolete. Post-modernism is in charge now. Liberalism has pulled up its political ladder. A once somnolent social democracy, Australia, has enacted a web of new laws protecting secretive, authoritarian power and preventing the right to know. Whistleblowers are outlaws to be tried in secret. An especially sinister law bans ‘foreign interference’ by those who work for foreign companies. What does this mean?
Democracy is notional now; there is the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of ‘identity.’ American admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by the Australian taxpayer for ‘advice.’ Right across the West, our political imagination has been pacified by PR and distracted by the intrigues of corrupt, ultra-low-rent politicians: a Johnson or a Trump or a Sleepy Joe or a Zelensky.
No writers’ congress in 2023 worries about ‘crumbling capitalism’ and the lethal provocations of ‘our’ leaders. The most infamous of these, Blair, a prima facie criminal under the Nuremberg Standard, is free and rich. Julian Assange, who dared journalists to prove their readers had a right to know, is in his second decade of incarceration.
The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism,’ as you prefer. Ukraine, as modern Europe’s fascist beehive, has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy,’ which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.
Today, Bandera is hero-worshipped in western Ukraine, and scores of statues of him and his fellow fascists have been paid for by the EU and the US, replacing those of Russian cultural giants and others who liberated Ukraine from the original Nazis.
Marth Gallhorn, center, talks to Native American soldiers on the 5th Army on the Cassino Front in Italy, March 1944 during World War II. British Official Photo | AP
In 2014, neo-Nazis played a key role in an American-bankrolled coup against the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was accused of being ‘pro-Moscow.’ The coup regime included prominent ‘extreme nationalists’ — Nazis in all but name.
At first, this was reported at length by the BBC and the European and American media. In 2019, Time magazine featured the ‘white supremacist militias‘ active in Ukraine. NBC News reported, ‘Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real.’ The immolation of trade unionists in Odessa was filmed and documented.
Spearheaded by the Azov regiment, whose insignia, the ‘Wolfsangel,’ was made infamous by the German SS, Ukraine’s military invaded the eastern, Russian-speaking Donbas region. According to the United Nations, 14,000 in the east were killed. Seven years later, with the Minsk peace conferences sabotaged by the West, as Angela Merkel confessed, the Red Army invaded.
This version of events was not reported in the West. To even utter it is to bring down abuse about being a ‘Putin apologist,’ regardless of whether the writer (such as myself) has condemned the Russian invasion. Understanding the extreme provocation that a Nato-armed borderland, Ukraine, the same borderland through which Hitler invaded, presented to Moscow, is anathema.
Journalists who traveled to the Donbas were silenced or even hounded in their own country. German journalist Patrik Baab lost his job, and a young German freelance reporter, Alina Lipp, had her bank account sequestered.
In Britain, the silence of the liberal intelligentsia is the silence of intimidation. State-sponsored issues like Ukraine and Israel are to be avoided if you want to keep a campus job or a teaching tenure. What happened to Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 is repeated on campuses where opponents of apartheid Israel are casually smeared as anti-Semitic.
Professor David Miller, ironically the country’s leading authority on modern propaganda, was sacked by Bristol University for suggesting publicly that Israel’s ‘assets’ in Britain and its political lobbying exerted a disproportionate influence worldwide — a fact for which the evidence is voluminous.
The university hired a leading QC to investigate the case independently. His report exonerated Miller on the ‘important issue of academic freedom of expression’ and found ‘Professor Miller’s comments did not constitute unlawful speech.’ Yet Bristol sacked him. The message is clear: no matter what outrage it perpetrates, Israel has immunity, and its critics are to be punished.
A few years ago, Terry Eagleton, then professor of English literature at Manchester University, reckoned that ‘for the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life.’
No Shelley spoke for the poor, no Blake for utopian dreams, no Byron damned the corruption of the ruling class, and no Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin revealed the moral disaster of capitalism. William Morris, Oscar Wilde, HG Wells, and George Bernard Shaw had no equivalents today. Harold Pinter was alive then, ‘the last to raise his voice,’ wrote Eagleton.
THE RE-GREENING OF AMERICA
Where did post-modernism — the rejection of actual politics and authentic dissent — come from? The publication in 1970 of Charles Reich’s bestselling book, The Greening of America, offers a clue. America then was in a state of upheaval; Nixon was in the White House, and a civil resistance known as ‘the movement’ had burst out of the margins of society in the midst of a war that touched almost everybody. In alliance with the civil rights movement, it presented the most serious challenge to Washington’s power for a century.
On the cover of Reich’s book were these words: ‘There is a revolution coming. It will not be like the revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual.’
At the time, I was a correspondent in the United States and recall the overnight elevation to guru status of Reich, a young Yale academic. The New Yorker had sensationally serialized his book, whose message was that the ‘political action and truth-telling of the 1960s had failed and only ‘culture and introspection’ would change the world. It felt as if hippydom was claiming the consumer classes. And in one sense, it was.
Within a few years, the cult of ‘me-ism’ had all but overwhelmed many people’s sense of acting together, of social justice and internationalism. Class, gender and race were separated. The personal was the political, and the media was the message. Make money, it said.
As for ‘the movement,’ its hope and songs, the years of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton put an end to all that. The police were now in open war with black people; Clinton’s notorious welfare bills broke world records in the number of mostly blacks they sent to jail.
When 9/11 happened, the fabrication of new ‘threats’ on ‘America’s frontier’ (as the Project for a New American Century called the world) completed the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.
In the years since America has gone to war with the world. According to a largely ignored report by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the number killed in America’s ‘war on terror’ was ‘at least’ 1.3 million in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
This figure does not include the dead of US-led and fuelled wars in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Somalia and beyond. The true figure said the report ‘could well be in excess of 2 million [or] approximately ten times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision-makers are aware and [is] propagated by the media and major NGOs.’
‘At least’ one million were killed in Iraq, say the physicians, or five percent of the population.
The enormity of this violence and suffering seems to have no place in the Western consciousness. ‘No one knows how many’ is the media refrain. Blair and George W. Bush — and Straw and Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld et al. — were never in danger of prosecution. Blair’s propaganda maestro, Alistair Campbell, is celebrated as a ‘media personality.’
In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the acclaimed investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, ‘What if the constitutionally freest media in the world had seriously challenged George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims instead of spreading what turned out to be crude propaganda?’
He replied. ‘If we journalists had done our job, there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.’
Gen. Tommy Franks, head of US forces in Iraq, speaks with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during an interview at the Coalition Media Center in Doha, Qatar, April 13, 2003. Steven Senne | AP
I put the same question to Dan Rather, the famous CBS anchor, who gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer, who had promoted Saddam Hussein’s ‘threat,’ and Rageh Omaar, then the BBC’s Iraq correspondent, gave me the same answer. Rose’s admirable contrition at having been ‘duped’ spoke for many reporters bereft of his courage to say so.
Their point is worth repeating. Had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, a million Iraqi men, women, and children might be alive today; millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and Islamic State might not have existed.
Cast that truth across the rapacious wars since 1945 ignited by the United States and its ‘allies,’ and the conclusion is breathtaking. Is this ever raised in journalism schools?
WAR BY MEDIA
Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: ‘Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically… In the propaganda system… it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.’
One of the persistent strands in American political life is a cultish extremism that approaches fascism. Although Trump was credited with this, it was during Obama’s two terms that American foreign policy flirted seriously with fascism. This was almost never reported.
‘I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being,’ said Obama, who expanded a favorite presidential pastime, bombing and death squads known as ‘special operations’ as no other president had done since the first Cold War.
According to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016, Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people and people of color: in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Every Tuesday – reported the New York Times – he personally selected those who would be murdered by hellfire missiles fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, and shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the ‘terrorist target.’
A leading Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, estimated, approvingly, that Obama’s drones had killed 4,700 people. ‘Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that,’ he said, but we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda.’
In 2011, Obama told the media that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was planning ‘genocide’ against his own people. ‘We knew…,’ he said, ‘that if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte [North Carolina], could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.’
This was a lie. The only ‘threat’ was the coming defeat of fanatical Islamists by Libyan government forces. With his plans for a revival of independent pan-Africanism, an African bank and African currency, all of it funded by Libyan oil, Gaddafi was cast as an enemy of Western colonialism on the continent in which Libya was the second most modern state.
Destroying Gaddafi’s ‘threat’ and his modern state was the aim. Backed by the US, Britain and France, Nato launched 9,700 sorties against Libya. A third was aimed at infrastructure and civilian targets, reported the UN. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that ‘most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten’.
When Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, was told that Gaddafi had been captured by the insurrectionists and sodomized with a knife, she laughed and said to the camera: ‘We came, we saw, he died!’
On 14 September 2016, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee in London reported the conclusion of a year-long study into the Nato attack on Libya, which it described as an ‘array of lies’ — including the Benghazi massacre story.
The NATO bombing plunged Libya into a humanitarian disaster, killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more, transforming Libya from the African country with the highest standard of living into a war-torn failed state.
Under Obama, the US extended secret ‘special forces’ operations to 138 countries or 70 percent of the world’s population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa.
Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has since built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Africom’s ‘soldier to soldier’ doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.
It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, has been consigned to oblivion by a new white master’s black colonial elite. This elite’s ‘historic mission,’ warned the knowing Frantz Fanon, is the promotion of ‘a capitalism rampant though camouflaged.’
In the year Nato invaded Libya, in 2011, Obama announced what became known as the ‘pivot to Asia.’ Almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to the Asia-Pacific to ‘confront the threat from China,’ in the words of his Defence Secretary.
There was no threat from China; there was a threat to China from the United States; some 400 American military bases formed an arc along the rim of China’s industrial heartlands, which a Pentagon official described approvingly as a ‘noose.’
At the same time, Obama placed missiles in Eastern Europe aimed at Russia. It was the beatified recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who increased spending on nuclear warheads to a level higher than that of any US administration since the Cold War – having promised, in an emotional speech in the center of Prague in 2009, to ‘help rid the world of nuclear weapons.’
Obama and his administration knew full well that the coup his assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, was sent to oversee against the government of Ukraine in 2014 would provoke a Russian response and probably lead to war. And so it has.
“OUR” PROPAGANDA
I am writing this on 30 April, the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the twentieth century in Vietnam, which I reported. I was very young when I arrived in Saigon, and I learned a great deal. I learned to recognize the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.
All through that war, the propaganda said a victorious Vietnam would spread its communist disease to the rest of Asia, allowing the Great Yellow Peril to its north to sweep down. Countries would fall like ‘dominoes.’
Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam was victorious, and none of the above happened. Instead, Vietnamese civilization blossomed, remarkably, in spite of the price they paid: three million dead. The maimed, the deformed, the addicted, the poisoned, the lost.
If the current propagandists get their war with China, this will be a fraction of what is to come. Speak up.
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.
Related Videos
Speech of the Permanent Representative of Syria to the United Nations, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, on the situation in the Middle East
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.
NATO-sponsored Al Qaeda terrorists in northwestern Syria carried out waves of terrorist attacks against the Syrian Arab Army posts in the southern Idlib countryside and northern Latakkia countryside, the Syrian army repelled the attacks successfully.
Avenging the bombing of northern ‘Israel’ yesterday, the NATO-sponsored Turkish army-affiliated Nusra Front (al Qaeda Levant) and the Turkistan Islamist Party (ISIS) attacked the Syrian Arab Army posts in two different axes in the northwest of Syria consecutively, in both attacks the vigilant Syrian Arab Army SAA units repelled the attacks and inflict serious casualties among the attackers.
Shortly after midnight, on the al Fatatra axis in southern Idlib, the SAA units protecting the liberated villages managed to kill several terrorists and wound many others of the Nusra Front (aka HTS) with help of the SAA artillery shredding the attackers and their dens they launched their attacks from.
Who finances and arms these terrorists on the United Nations Security Council’s terrorist list with all the advanced weapons and communication devices?
Local sources reported dense clashes in the area, the Syrian Ministry of Defense later confirmed in a statement carried by the Syrian news agency SANA the reports and pointed to the coordinated involvement of the SAA artillery in these clashes.
In northern Latakia countryside, northwest of Syria, the Syrian Arab Army units repelled an attack by a group of the NATO-sponsored Turkistan (anti-Islamic) Islamist Party (ISIS – ISIL – Daesh) terrorists, the attack was foiled and several terrorists were killed including a so-called Abu Qutada, a commander in the terrorist group.
The body of the killed commander was taken by the SAA for further investigations with the Russian authorities, and most likely with Chinese security. The CIA with the help of ‘intelligence’ agencies from a number of Gulfies states and the Turkish MiT recruit terrorists for this Turkistan Islamist Party from Central Asia all the way from the Chinese Uighur to northern Turkey, Washingnton’s created Green Belt that surrounds southern Russia and west of China.
Both of the terrorist groups in these two attacks in southern Idlib countryside and northern Latakia countryside are the most ideologically loyal to the Turkish madman Erdogan and his anti-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood organization. Nothing stops this madman Erdogan from spilling the blood of innocent people, especially mainstream Muslims, and Christians even in Islam’s holiest Ramadan fasting month, just like his masters in Tel Aviv.
The Russian Ministry of Defense, on its part, reported the attack of the anti-Islamic Turkistan Islamist Party foiled by the Syrian Arab Army in northwest Syria, the Russian sources added that 3 of the attackers were killed in this attack.
Analysts in northern Syria connected these attacks with the overall NATO escalation across the globe as their Ukraine project is failing miserably, and the analysts link the timing of these particular two terrorist attacks to the bombing of northern ‘Israel’ – occupied Palestine yesterday pointing to the close relationship between the terrorist groups in Syria and Israel.
Syria News is a collaborative effort by two authors only, we end up most of the months paying from our pockets to maintain the site’s presence online, if you like our work and want us to remain online you can help by chipping in a couple of Euros/ Dollars or any other currency so we can meet our site’s costs.You can also donate with Cryptocurrencies through our donate page. Thank you in advance.
أعلنت مجموعة «فاغنر» الروسية شبه العسكرية، اليوم، سيطرتها على مبنى بلدية باخموت شرقي أوكرانيا، مشيرةً إلى أنّ هذا يعني أنها باتت تسيطر على المدينة «قانونياً».
وقال قائد «فاغنر»، يفغيني بريغوجين، على «تيليغرام»: «بالمعنى القانوني، تمت السيطرة على باخموت. والعدو يتركز في المناطق الغربية».
وتمّ رفع العلم الروسي فوق المبنى، وسط إعلان بريغوجين أنّ «قادة الوحدات التي سيطرت على البلدية ووسط المدينة برمته سيرفعون هذا العلم».
ويُظهر مقطع فيديو مرفق برسالته بريغوجين ملوّحاً بالعلم الروسي، مع كتابة تكرّم المدوّن العسكري الروسي، فلادلين تاتارسكي، الذي قُتل في انفجار قنبلة في سانت بطرسبرغ أمس.
وتابع: «ها هي شركة (فاغنر) العسكرية الخاصة، ها هم الرجال الذين سيطروا على باخموت. من وجهة نظر قانونية، إنها لنا».
🇷🇺🇺🇦❗ Prigozhin: BAKHMUT IS TAKEN
“April 2, 2023, 23:00.We hoisted the Russian flag with the inscription"Good memory to Vladlen Tatarsky"and the flag of PMC"Wagner"on the city administration of Bakhmut. Legally Bakhmut is taken.The enemy is concentrated in the western regions." pic.twitter.com/AtanSL0bVT
وكان عدد سكان باخموت يبلغ 70 ألفاً قبل الحرب، قبل أن تتحول هذه المدينة، منذ أشهر، إلى مسرح معارك عنيفة.
ويأتي إعلان المجموعة العسكرية، بعد ساعات من إعلانٍ أوكراني مغاير، إذ أكد الجيش الأوكراني، أمس، على أنّه ما زال «مسيطراً» على باخموت شرقي أوكرانيا، وذلك قبل ساعات من إعلان المجموعة السيطرة على المدينة.
وممّا قالته هيئة الأركان العامة الأوكرانية على «فايسبوك»: «العدو لم يوقف هجومه على باخموت. لكن المدافعين الأوكرانيين يسيطرون بشجاعة على المدينة، وصدوا الكثير من هجمات العدو».
إنّ التاريخ يأخذ وقته في حياكة الأحداث إلى أن تكتمل شروط التحوّل الكبير، والذي سوف يشهده ويعاصره ويعيشه العالم لحقب، وربما لقرون.
في تناول الأحداث الصغيرة منها والكبيرة، وتحليل أسبابها واستشراف نتائجها، يُثبت الإنسان في كلّ مرّة أنّه “خُلِقَ عجولا”، وأنّه رغم هذا التاريخ الطويل نسبياً للبشرية، فهو ما زال قليل الصبر والحكمة في تفكّره واستقراءاته. وإذا بدأنا هنا من الحرب الإرهابية، التي شنّتها الدول الاستعمارية الغربية وأتباعها، على سوريا عام 2011، وقام أحدنا بالعمل المضني في استعراض تيّار الإعلام الغربي والعربي بخصوص هذه الحرب، نجد أنّ التحليلات والاستقراءات التي نُشرت بصددها، والتي ساهمت في تضليل الكثيرين تفتقر إلى الاستفادة من التاريخ، كما تفتقر إلى نعمتي الحكمة والصبر. وإذا تناولنا الحرب على اليمن بعُجالة، نجد أنّ معظم ما قيل ونُشر عن الحرب على اليمن لا علاقة له بتاريخ اليمن، ولا بصفات الشعب اليمني الأصيلة والمثبتة، ولا بالحقائق الوجودية اليوم التي يعيشها هذا الشعب، بل تنطلق بمعظمها من استهداف عزيمة وثقة هذا الشعب بنفسه، ومحاولة إلحاق الهزيمة النفسية به من خلال التهويل الإعلامي الذي هو في الحقيقة أداة من أدوات هذه الحرب على هذا الشعب الشجاع والصابر والمؤمن بالله والوطن.
بعد سنة فقط من بدء هذه العملية في أوكرانيا، يجتمع الرئيسان الروسي والصيني ليناقشا مجالات التعاون
ولكنّ المثال الأكبر، والذي أودّ أن أتوقّف عنده وأقلّبه من كلّ زواياه وجوانبه، وذلك للأثر الشديد له على مصيرنا جميعاً، ومصير البشرية للعقود القادمة، هو العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا، والتي رغم انطلاقها من نقطة نزاع بين روسيا والغرب إلا أنّ ارتداداتها ونتائجها ذات أثر بالغ على مستقبل وشؤون الدول، وعلى مستقبل العلاقات الدولية، وعلى مستقبل الإنسان في كلّ مكان، ولن تستكمل هذه الارتدادات دورتها ونتائجها إلا بعد عقود من الآن، وسيعيش أبناؤنا وربما أحفادنا التغيرات التي أطلقتها شرارة هذه الحرب فقط لإطلاق مسار تشعّب بعد ذلك وتطوّر في الميادين المختلفة وتطوّرت أهدافه وأصبح مثل كرة الثلج لا يمكن إيقافه بمكان ولا تحديده بموضوع أو مجال معين.
بعد سنة فقط من بدء هذه العملية في أوكرانيا، يجتمع الرئيسان الروسي والصيني ليناقشا مجالات التعاون بين بلديهما في الطاقة والصناعة وتبادل السلع بالعملات المحلية، والاستثمار في مجالات لم تخطر لهم على بال قبل عام فقط، دون أن يركّزوا على العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا، والتي ربما تشكّل اليوم هامشاً صغيراً في إطار هذه العلاقات. وبعد عام من هذه العملية توقّع الهند مع الاتحاد الروسي اتفاقاً هاماً لتصدير الطاقة من روسيا إلى الهند بأسعار تفضيلية، (الأمر ذاته تمّ توقيعه مع الصين وبالعملة المحلية؛ أي استبعاد متزايد للدولار)، الأمر الذي سينجم عنه نهوضاً ملحوظاً في السنوات القادمة للصناعة الهندية والصينية، وتعزيز قدرتهما على منافسة المنتجات الأوروبية والأميركية.
وبعد عام من هذه العملية قامت الصين وروسيا وإيران بإجراء مناورات عسكرية بحرية مشتركة لضمان سلامة وأمن الممرات المائية، الأمر الذي لم يكن يخطر لأحد على بال قبل بدء العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا. وبعد عام من هذه العملية قامت الصين برعاية أهمّ اتفاق في هذا القرن، وبالتأكيد أهمّ اتفاق لمصير منطقة غرب أسيا والوطن العربي، وهو الاتفاق الإيراني السعودي، والذي كان مجرّد الحديث عنه قبل عامين يُعتبر ضرباً من الخيال. وبعد عام من العملية أصبحت إيران عضواً في منظمة شنغهاي، وقد قدّمت السعودية مؤخراً طلباً للانتساب إلى منظمة شنغهاي، مما يجعل هذه المنظمة أهمّ منظمة لمنتجي الطاقة: روسيا وإيران والسعودية، وسوف يكون لها رأي هام في أسعار وتوريد الطاقة عالمياً، وتتعامل دول هذه المنظمة بالعملات المحلية، مرسلةً دولار الهيمنة الأميركية إلى حتفه.
وبعد عام من هذه العملية بقي الاقتصاد الروسي منتعشاً، بل ازداد تصديره للنفط والغاز لأنه سارع إلى إيجاد أسواق بديلة عن السوق الأوروبية، وازداد الدخل الروسي من تصدير النفط والغاز عمّا كان عليه قبل العملية العسكرية في أوكرانيا، رغم كلّ العقوبات التي يُمنّي الغرب نفسه بالحديث عنها، وتضخيم آثارها المأمولة بالنسبة لهم، بينما هي فاقدة الأثر والأهمية، بل أكثر من ذلك، لقد دفعت هذه العقوبات الظالمة على الشعوب والدول تجمع دول آسيان لاتخاذ قرارات جريئة بتبادل السلع بعملاتهم المحلية كي لا يتمكّن الغرب من التلاعب بأقدارهم حين يحلو له وللأسباب التي يرتأيها. أي إنّ هذه العقوبات قد ارتدّت على الذين أصدروها بأنها أفقدت ثقة العالم بهم وبعملتهم وبنظام المدفوعات الـ “سويفت”، ودفعت الدول للتفكير ببدائل متحرّرة تماماً من التأثير الغربي. الأمر الذي ينعكس حكماً على مكانة الدولار الأسطورية، كعملة دولية، والتي كانت سبباً أساسياً لهيمنة الغرب الاستعماري على العالم وسطوته على موارده ونجاح عقوباته.
هذا في الشرق، أمّا في الغرب، فقد أرغمت الولايات المتحدة الدول الأوروبية على بتر علاقاتها مع روسيا، رغم أنّ هذه العلاقة كانت تصبّ في صالح الدول الأوروبية من خلال توفير الطاقة الرخيصة لاستخداماتها ولزراعتها ولصناعاتها. وماذا كان البديل؟ كان البديل هو أن تبيع الولايات المتحدة هذه الطاقة للدول الأوروبية بأربعة أضعاف السعر الذي كانت تكلفه هذه الطاقة من روسيا، الأمر الذي سينعكس إفقاراً لهذه الدول الأوروبية، وتخلّفاً في صناعتها وزراعتها، وعجزاً عن منافسة المنتجات الصينية والهندية والإندونيسية والبرازيلية في المستقبل القريب، الأمر الذي سيكفل خروج أوروبا من لائحة الدول المتقدّمة صناعياً، والمنافسة اقتصادياً لدول الشرق التي تمارس الحكمة والصبر في علاقاتها أولاً، وببناء عالم جديد من الإنتاج والعلاقات يزيح بحكم وجوده وقدرته على المنافسة العالم الغربي الذي تصرّف بصلف واستكبار، فوقع في شرّ ما قدّمت يداه.
هذا على الصعيد الاقتصادي والإنتاجي والمالي، أمّا على الصعيد الأخلاقي والإنساني، فقد سقط الغرب سقوطاً مدوّياً في براثن الليبرالية الحديثة سيئة الصيت، وأخذت الإنسانية تعمل على حماية نفسها من تأثيرات الغرب القميئة على مستقبل أجيالها. ولكلّ هذا أقول لمن ما زال يؤمن بقوّة الغرب وحكمته، وأنه لا يُقهر وأنه الأنموذج والمثل، إنّ التاريخ يتشكّل ليبرهن عكس ذلك تماماً، ولكنّ التاريخ ليس عجولاً، بل يأخذ وقته في حياكة الأحداث إلى أن تكتمل شروط التحوّل الكبير، والذي سوف يشهده ويعاصره ويعيشه العالم لحقب، وربما لقرون بعد الإيذان بهذا التحوّل من خلال شرارة أطلقت في مكان ما ثمّ أخذت الأحداث مسارها ومجالاتها وتوقيتها بغضّ النظر عن مصير تلك الشرارة، وبشكل أكبر وأهمّ وأدهى مما يتخيّله كثيرون.
إن الآراء المذكورة في هذه المقالة لا تعبّر بالضرورة عن رأي الميادين وإنما تعبّر عن رأي صاحبها حصراً
A review of Mahmood Mamdani’s “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009): comparing the ICC’s indictment of Omar El Bashir with that of President Putin.
The ICC’s Legal Acrobatics: from Darfur to Donbass
“Against those who substitute moral certainty for knowledge, and who feel virtuous even when acting on the basis of total ignorance.” (M. Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the Global War on Terror, 2009)
The recent legal complications between Russia and the ICC, which have resulted in mutual arrest warrants, are eerily reminiscent of the ICC’s case against Sudanese President Omar el Bashir in 2008, which evokes similar legal complications: such that neither El Bashir nor President Putin are nationals of states party to the Rome Statute nor are the crimes they were accused of committing on the territory of a state party to the Rome Statute. The ICC, according to its founding treaty: the Rome Statute, doesn’t have jurisdiction for indicting either person, yet the ICC, which is principally a technocratic apolitical international organization, acted as a front line for the US in isolating its enemies.
“The decisions of the ICC have no significance for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said after the International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber II issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova.
In 2019, Omar El Bashir was eventually ousted in a military coup ending his three-decade-long streak of iron-grip rule over Sudan. He was then sentenced to two years in prison for charges of corruption by the newly formed government which refused to turn him in to the ICC. The case of El Bashir was swiftly contained with minimal implications to geopolitics in the Middle East to the US interests: One ‘pariah‘ regime accused of bloodshed within Sudan was replaced by an internationally recognized regime involved in bloodshed in Yemen.
Despite the swift containment of El Bashir, the significance of Mamdani’s argument holds. If anything, Mamdani’s argument stands as even more relevant when looking at Putin’s case. The indictment of Putin is incomparably consequential compared to the indictment of El Bashir.
The International Criminal Court
The mandate of the ICC is expressed by the Rome Statute of 1998 :
Only individuals are liable for indictment. As opposed to its sister organization, the International Court of Justice, whose mandate presumes a legal personality of states, the ICC can only indict “natural persons” as expressed in article 25. The ICC cannot prosecute states only individuals.
The jurisdiction of the court, as expressed by Article 5, is restricted to the “most serious crimes of concern for the international community” i.e. mass atrocity crimes which expressly include: Genocide (article 6), Crimes against Humanity (article 7), War Crimes (article 8), Crime of Aggression (article 9).
As a precondition for prosecuting an individual accused of committing a mass atrocity, the court can have no jurisdiction over the case unless the alleged criminal is either a national of a state party to the Rome Statute or they had committed the alleged mass atrocity on the territory of a state which is a party to the Rome Statute, as expressed by article 12.
Typically, cases studied by the ICC are not autonomously-initiated, rather they are administered following referrals: either by a state party to the Rome Statue or more recently through a referral by the Security Council (as was the case with Omar el Bashir) or following an investigation conducted by the Prosecutor after getting authorization from the Pre-Trial chamber (as was the case with President Putin).
Revisiting the Case of Omar El Bashir in the Geopolitical Context of the War on Terror
The indictment of Omar El Bashir by the ICC was a landmark event in the practice of international law and international organizations. It set precedence by issuing an arrest warrant for not just any “natural person” but a president of a sovereign state. Furthermore, it manifested a very blatant case of the politicization of justice by coopting an international court for furthering geopolitical interests.
The prosecution of Omar El Bashir had happened in the context of the ferocious so-called “War on Terror” waged by George Bush on the nations of West Asia. As revealed by General Wesley Clark, Sudan was fourth on the list of the Seven-Country grand strategy devised by the US following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, Bush was in the last year of his second term and he was still 5 countries short of fulfilling the grand strategy.
In addition to Western diplomats with actual interests at stake, many civil society groups were very excited about the indictment of El Bashir. Most notorious were the groups that fell under the “Save Darfur” campaign. The campaign has since been irrelevant, but it’s very much comparable to other pertinent campaigns promoting “democracy” and “human rights” like Free Iran or SOS Cuba.
Mamdani extensively tackles the drives and dynamics of the human-rights-activism phenomena of the “Save Darfur” campaign in his book “Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror” which was published in the same year as his article critiquing the ICC. Despite having been largely dismissed by many of the “Save Darfur” human rights activists as an apologia for El Bashir’s crimes, Mamdani doesn’t argue for el Bashir’s innocence; Mamdani’s article “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009) essentially serves as an ideographic critique of the ICC through the case study of the former Sudanese President.
Framed in the literature on the ontology of international organizations, Mamdani argues that the ICC serves more as a tool rather than an actor in international affairs (I. Hurd, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice, Ch2, 2014). The ICC which is typically presented to be uniquely technocratic and apolitical in contrast to other international organizations, actively partook in a geopolitical strategy to take down the enemies of the US.
Mamdani’s Argument on the Politicization of the ICC
In “The International Criminal Court’s Case Against The President of Sudan: A Critical Look” (2009) Mamdani argues that the politicization of the indictment of Omar El Bashir was evidenced by (1) the historical revisionism in approaching the crisis in Darfur (2) the skimpy investigation and representation of evidence, but most importantly (3) the legal process for the ICC’s indictment of El Bashir.
El-Bashir was the first president to be indicted by the ICC. Despite being legally consistent with the Rome Statute, the indictment was a novel event in the history of the ICC. Despite standing as the personification of the Sudanese state, El-Bashir was ultimately a “natural person” liable for prosecution by the ICC in theory. However, his indictment was a landmark event in the practice of international law: partly because it was unprecedented but also because it was a clear case of mobilizing the ICC for geopolitical ends.
Most evidently, the politicization of the case manifested in the double standards exhibited by the ICC; Mamdani points out that El Bashir was prosecuted by the ICC for manning a violent counter-insurgency campaign in Sudan (which was classified as genocide in reference to article 6 of the Rome Statute), less than a decade from the cross-Atlantic invasions which Bush waged against Afghanistan and Iraq (which classify as Crimes Against Humanity per article 7, War Crimes per article 8, and Crimes of Aggression per article 9 of the Rome Statute) without being subject to indictment by the ICC.
Furthermore, El-Bashir was indicted for the crime of genocide, which is specified under article 6 of the Rome Statute as a mass atrocity crime that falls under the jurisdiction of the ICC. In his article, Mandami problematizes the arbitrariness of the prospect of genocide. The distinction between a legitimate counter-insurgency campaign and an international-community-shaking mass atrocity such as genocide is manipulated by political semantics. There is no clear distinction between the two. Objectively, one event can be categorized as either. There is no death-count threshold that separates the two in international law. A counter-insurgency can result in more deaths than genocide. The distinction, as stipulated by the definition of genocide adopted in article 6 of the Rome Statute, is conditioned upon the “intentions” of the perpetrator.
Rome Statute
Article 6 For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any act committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group
The vagueness of some prospects of the Rome Statute, its susceptibility to the politics of semantic manipulation, and the ICC’s potential for infringing on the sovereignty of governments has led many States to refrain from ratifying the statute: Sudan being one of them in addition to Russia, the US, Ukraine, and many others. The ICC, whose jurisdiction is fundamentally preconditioned on the ratification of the Rome Statute, has acted despite this under the moral pretext of responsibility to protect human lives which suspiciously coincided with the geopolitical interests of the US: by targeting those who are hostile to the US and sparing the US and their allies. For example, El Bashir was indicted for cracking down on insurgents in Sudan, but King Mohammad of Morocco wasn’t for the violent suppression of the Sahrawi people nor was Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman for slaughtering and starving Yemenis nor was Yehud Olmert for attempting to invade Lebanon. The ICC, after all, is mobilized according to what is of “concern” to the “international community”.
Rome Statute
Article 5 The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.
Briefly, Mamdani’s argument can be formalized as follows:
(P1) Sudan didn’t ratify the Rome Statute
(P2) thus, the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed by El Bashir in Darfur
(P3) the ICC’s arrest warrant is devoid of a legal basis (or at least is founded on a shaky legal basis)
(C) Therefore, acknowledging the geopolitical context, the indictment of El Bashir is a case of politicized justice
Counter-argument to Mamdani
Many have refuted Mamdani’s argument for the illegal nature of the ICC’s indictment by referring to Chapter VII of the UN charter. Sudan isn’t party to the Rome Statute but they are party to the United Nations. The conflict in Darfur was referred by the Security Council to the International Criminal Court through Resolution 1593 of the SC as per article 13 (b) of the Rome Statute. The ICC in itself might not have jurisdiction over Sudan, but the Security Council does. The Council also has the liberty to decide on whatever measure it sees fit to deal with a given situation. The SC which had jurisdiction over Darfur granted the ICC jurisdiction by extension through the referral expressed in Resolution 1593.
UN Charter: Chapter VII
Article 39 The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken.
Article 41 The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
Despite refuting the part about legality, Mamdani’s critique of the ICC, as being subject to politicization for furthering western geopolitical interests, stands. The reason why similar security council resolutions for referral to the ICC have not been posited against Bush for committing comparable and even worse “mass atrocities” in Afghanistan and Iraq or Obama for crimes in Libya and Syria or Olmert for crimes in Lebanon and Palestine is political. The ICC despite being presented as technocratic and apolitical is molded by the power relations of international politics.
The West’s Game of Legal Acrobatics with Russia
The ICC’s jurisdiction encompasses states which are party to the Rome Statute
Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Rome Statute. Russia and Ukraine signed the statute in 2000 but neither ratified it (they didn’t pass it in their respective national parliaments). Russia even withdrew its signature from the statute in 2016 after the legal fiasco of the ICC with Omar Al Bashir.
Thus, neither of the alleged “criminals” (Putin nor Belova) are nationals of a state which is a party to the Rome Statute nor are the alleged “crimes” done on the territory of a state (Russia nor Ukraine) which is a party to the Rome Statute.
Legally, the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction over any potential crime that might happen during the military conflict in Ukraine. Unless the alleged criminal is a national of a state which has ratified the statute. If the ICC finds the war in Ukraine a hotspot for “serious crimes of concern to the international community,” the only individuals they have jurisdiction for prosecuting would be Polish, German, British, or French “natural persons” involved in alleged crimes (or any other individual who is a national of a state which has ratified the Rome Statute).
referral to the ICC was done by the ICC Prosecutor
Furthermore, referral to the ICC was done by the Prosecutor’s investigation, as per article 13 (c) of the Rome statute which wasn’t ratified by Russia or Ukraine. Consequently, the Pre-Trial Chamber II issued an arrest warrant for President Putin and Commissioner Maria Belova.
Contrary to the case of El Bashir, the ICC’s arrest warrant wasn’t legitimized through extending jurisdiction from a security council resolution. The activation of the ICC was solely based on the Rome Statute. Extending legitimacy for the Rome Statute from the UN charter by a security council resolution as was the case with El Bashir can’t possibly happen such that Russia holds a permanent seat in the Security Council and enjoys veto power against any resolution.
the pretext for the arrest warrants is the transfer of children from a war zone
The ICC’s lack of jurisdiction isn’t the only sketchy prospect about the ICC’s case against Putin and Belova. The alleged crime that the two Russian officials were accused of is very peculiar: the forcible displacement of Ukrainian children from Donbass to the Russian Federation, as per article 6(e) of the Rome Statute).
The ICC’s choice of allegation is very comical in light of the coverage of the war in Ukraine by western media; Putin was accused of unjustifiably invading Ukraine, killing civilians, torture, and a plethora of other crimes which were popularly broadcasted by western media with the onset of the Russian special military operation.
The Rome Statute abounds with specific crimes which correspond to the narratives of western media about Putin, yet the ICC Prosecutor opted for the most ambiguous to indict Putin for: “Genocide” by the forcible transfer of children.
Rome Statute
Article 6 for the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Even if were to assume that the ICC has jurisdiction over the situation in Ukraine, the alleged crime for which Putin and Belova are being indicted can be problematized on different levels. The transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia doesn’t imply genocide; as expressed by the Statute genocide is defined according to the intentions of the perpetrator.
Putin never expressed intentions to “destroy, in whole or in part” the Ukranian national group. There was no explicit intention of genocide. Furthermore, there are no implicit intentions of genocide that can be stipulated from Putin’s actions. The military operation is in line with its declared objectives of deterring NATO expansion and protecting the Donbass population neither of which can be identified as “genocide”. It’s not clear that the children transferred to the Russian Federation were “forcibly” transferred nor is it clear that the children who were transferred are Ukrainian and not Russian. The population residing in the Ukrainian territories of Donbass are predominantly Russians who have been systematically prosecuted by the Kiev regime since the 2014 coup.
The pretext for Putin’s arrest is very comical when acknowledging the geopolitics and the legal semantics underlying the ICC’s indictment. One can argue that many school bus drivers are worse genocidal criminals than Putin.
The US wants the ICC to indict Putin but doesn’t want to provide them with the necessary evidence
More comical is the US policy towards the indictment. The confusion of the US bureaucracy before and after the ICC’s arrest warrant against Putin is representative of US arrogance: wanting to have their cake and eat it too. The Biden administration, in the final days of its first and seemingly last term, has grown restless to score a swift geopolitical victory by diplomatically isolating Putin: a restlessness that is comparable to that of Bush’s in 2009.
The White House’s excitement to cooperate with the ICC to isolate Putin was quickly met with concern from other bureaucratic institutions in the US which anticipated a potential backfire from fraternizing with the ICC.
Back in early March, theNew York Timesreported that the US Department of Defense opposes Biden’s initiative to hand over evidence that allegedly incriminates Russia for committing ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine to the ICC. The report claimed top-ranking officials in the US military are attempting to stifle the ICC-US cooperation through the provision of evidence in fear of setting a dangerous precedent that might expose the US to similar measures.
The United States has long avoided the ICC out of concern that the tribunal would go after US officials accused of war crimes. However, back in December, Congress modified the legal restrictions on cooperating with the Court strictly to allow sharing of information on Ukraine in an effort to prosecute Russian individuals.
The evidence for the arrest warrant is still ambiguous. The Prosecution conducted an investigation and presented it to the Pre-Trial chamber which deemed it reasonable enough to proceed with court proceedings.
The ICC’s arrest warrant expressed that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” however it’s still not clear whether the evidence on which the Prosecution based their investigation was acquired from the White House. It’s also still not clear what type of evidence it was or if it was sufficient evidence for indicting Putin for genocide. What’s clear however is how international law can be stretched and spun in favor of some against others.
In brief, regardless of the lack of jurisdiction, the ICC’s case against Putin is still not clearly justified in terms of evidence. The only detectable basis for the ICC’s arrest warrant is the advertised virtuous indignation and moral high grounds of the West.
Perhaps President Biden’s comment on the situation best captures the oxymoronic confusion and legal acrobatics underlying the ICC’s arrest warrant against Putin. “I think it’s justified, but the question is, it’s not recognized internationally by us, either. But I think it makes a very strong point. Putin clearly committed war crimes”
As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 