Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh confirmed that Washington enabled both Ukrainian attacks on the Kerch Bridge on Thursday. “The Biden administration’s role in both attacks was vital,” he declared on his Substack.
“Of course, it was our technology,” an American official told Hersh, referring to the drone that damaged the bridge on July 17. “The drone was remotely guided and half submerged–like a torpedo.”
Hersh did not identify his source, but his latest post was described as a look at recent events in Ukraine “from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don’t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should.”
Asked if the US intelligence community considered the possibility of Russian retaliation for the bridge attack, Hersh’s source replied, “we don’t think that far.”
“Our national strategy is that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision,” he added.
A truck bomb exploded on the Crimean Bridge in early October 2022, killing three civilians. The bridge was seriously damaged and required months of repairs. The July drone attack killed two people and orphaned a 14-year-old girl, who barely survived.
Kiev celebrated both attacks, but officially denied any responsibility. US intelligence quickly attributed the October truck bombing to Ukrainian intelligence, however. The head of Ukraine’s main intelligence agency, the SBU, finally took credit for the blast earlier this week.
With the war in Ukraine almost entering its second year, much more is at stake now, as both parties have invested immensely and the outcome might decide their fate, so what will happen in 2023?
Ukraine 2022, a Recap
The war in Ukraine could be the most significant geopolitical event in this century, as it represents an embodiment of the shift in the global balance of power. Such an action made by Russia, intervening to protect what it describes as its non-negotiables, and the actions of many countries taking the decision not to side with the collective West, could not have even been imagined two decades ago. It is safe to assume that the undeniable shifts in the global political and economic epicenter to the East permitted states seeking a more independent approach and autonomy from western hegemony to undertake risky political actions. Clausewitz had announced centuries ago that war is a mere continuation of political action with other means.
Plowing through the narratives of both sides regarding the factors that drove the event the way they went would take much more than this article can discuss, so we will try to stick to concrete events and numerical data in analyzing this conflict, its aspects, and the possible outcomes that the coming year might hold.
A hotter-than-usual February
Despite Russia revealing the goals behind the actions it took, which are the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, it did not provide a timeframe nor the extent to which the situation might escalate. NATO, on the other hand, started ramping up its arms shipments to Kiev on the eve of the conflict, a trend that would continue throughout the war and would consume a hefty chunk of the alliance’s military equipment stockpiles. In addition, an assumption was spread by Western media that the war would only take three days, despite the lack of any Russian official statement backing such a claim. Consequently, when the war entered its 10th month, the assumption was used to bash Russia’s military capabilities.
Utilizing several axes of attack, the Russian forces and their allies in the Donbass advanced. A few months into the conflict, the initial advances seemed to be aimed at having a shock effect on the Ukrainian political and military leadership, consequently leading to their sudden collapse, rather than being a part of a military plan that involved the surrounding and destruction of enemy forces. The initial Kiev push failed to break the will of the Kiev authorities to continue the fight, and the lack of an initial Russian Western-style Shock & Awe strategy contributed to inflating Kiev’s hopes of victory, leading to a prolonged grinding conflict.
In pursuing an initial strategy that intended to limit the damage to Ukraine’s civilian and military infrastructure and seeking a short conflict, Russia led to the exact opposite. When the initial offensive failed to collapse the Kiev authorities, the most logical decision at this point was to attempt a withdrawal and stabilize the frontlines while regrouping the retreating forces that sustained combat losses and damages. A static situation had developed during the months between Russia’s withdrawal from the Kiev district and the North of Ukraine, and the subsequent Ukrainian summer offensive that managed to push the Russians out of the Kherson and Kharkov districts. This period was characterized by an artillery duel, in which Russia had the upper hand, and a Ukrainian build-up that led to their consequent victory.
The Ukraine build-up was fueled by nine waves of mobilization and an endless train of Western military equipment that Russia had little success in derailing. Despite Kiev’s heavy losses in manpower and equipment, it was still capable of conducting cohesive military actions that were sustained by NATO’s whole massive intelligence-gathering apparatus. Russia, on the other hand, was stuck with what it had at the beginning of the war; around 150-200 thousand regulars plus its Donbass allies defending a frontline stretching thousands of kilometers. The juridical limits of the use of force imposed by the nature of “the special military operation” hindered Russia’s efforts in increasing pressure on Kiev and slowing down its buildup. What happened next was Russia withdrawing from some areas it took at the beginning of the war in an attempt to avoid huge losses that could result in its units being cut off or surrounded.
Shifting winds
Following the Ukrainian attack on the Crimean bridge and the appointment of a new commander to the Russian forces in the operations zone, Sergey Surovikin, Russia seemed as if it was starting to take the glove off. The start of this new phase of military operations was signaled by a mass strike against Ukraine’s dual-use infrastructure, such as various components of the electrical grid system using its arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles that Western media and experts had claimed had been exhausted several times during the conflict. A newcomer also took its toll on Ukraine’s military and dual-use infrastructure, highlighting an important aspect of modern warfare: suicide drones, the Geran-2 or the Shahed-136. Western countries and Kiev have accused Iran of supplying Russia with an arsenal of such drones, a claim that both Russia and Iran have refuted. We won’t delve into the details of both statements, yet we must state that it highlights growing military cooperation between parties opposed to the unipolar global system, an occurrence that causes great concern to the collective West.
Russia also undertook a partial mobilization that involved calling around 300,000 of its reserves. Arming and retraining such numbers is not a simple task, and in fact, it is still taking place today, according to Russian sources. Scores of these soldiers started arriving at the frontlines and taking part in the ongoing combat, but turning the balance of numbers around is going to take a while. Russia also is mainly targeting anti-air defense systems and munitions now by making use of a dual-strategy: destroying them using anti-radiation missiles and miniature suicide drones such as the Zala drone on one hand, and depleting their costly ammunition using cheap but effective drones, such as the Geran-2, on the other. The cost ratio between an interception and that of the intercepted can be as big as ten-fold, since the drone costs around $20,000 and an AD missile could reach half a million USD easily, starting from around $150,000. A losing bargain in the long term to say the least.
The same artillery grind is also ongoing and taking a toll on Ukrainian losses, but this time Russia is making use of the shorter contact lines to fill the defenses with an inferior number of troops in comparison with their adversaries until it finishes training its reserves. Despite the arrival of troops to the frontline, Russia will still not have the numerical superiority, but such numbers will serve primarily to consolidate the current lines of contact, and to give the Russians more options if they want to utilize their fire superiority to level the playing field around the Donbass and in the held part Zaporozhye regions east the Dnieper River.
Difficult situation, tough decisions
The political and military leaderships in the West and Kiev on one hand, and Moscow on the other, are faced with tough decisions with a tight timeline before them. These decisions will draw the outcomes of the conflict in the short and long term. The scale of the conflict is global, as the West sees Russia as a rogue state trying to undermine the Western-dominated so-called rules-based order, and it seems like it is willing to go above and beyond to guarantee another century of dominion over the planet. Russia has many reasons to fight in Ukraine that go beyond NATO expanding east and protecting the lives and rights of the Russian people in Ukraine. Russia is genuinely worried that the direction that Kiev was heading revealed a long-term plan to transform Ukraine into another “big Israel”, which the Ukrainian President hinted at in one of his speeches. A highly militarized society built around a fascist ideology that its raison d’etre is being anti-something, as in “Israel” being a “shield protecting the West from Eastern barbarism,” hinted by “Israel’s” fathers. Ukrainian leaders and media don’t waste an opportunity to remind the West that they are fighting the battle of the collective West, and thus they earned a blank check in exchange for providing the meat for the carnage.
If what some commentators say about Russia overestimating its military capabilities is true, then the West for sure overestimated its political and economic capabilities. Faced with an internal crisis and trapped in the loop of financing a state living off external aid, the West is facing the threat of a wedge forming between its components on both sides of the Atlantic as Europe, which is hit more by the effects of the crisis, sees that the US is trying to bail itself at its expense. This view has been expressed by various Western leaders.
Russia, faced with a nuclear bomb of Western sanctions, managed to surpass the worst, according to the head of its central bank. With hundreds of billions of dollars frozen abroad, the Russian economy is still holding. The Ruble has long stabilized, and alternative market opportunities have revealed themselves to the Western market. But will this be enough? Many countries across the globe refused to side with the West in its campaign, namely the Arab, African, and Latin countries, as well as India, China, Iran, and Turkey. Despite these countries not forming a cohesive block, their decisions gave Russia breathing space in this lengthy battle nevertheless.
A protracted conflict?
Both the West and Russia have invested so much in this conflict but still have not fully committed, as both parties still have many cards up their sleeve. For instance, even if NATO faces severe military equipment shortages, it can still provide Ukraine with new types of arms at the expense of its combat readiness, like tanks, warplanes, or maybe long-range precision munitions. Russia, on the other hand, has not undergone a full mobilization yet, both in the military and economic sense of the word, as it still spends only a small fraction of its GDP on the war, and its biggest “ally”, namely China, did not even start providing it with a significant amount of military hardware. China ramping up its aid to Russia is not so far-fetched since it benefits from a change in a global shift from the Western-dominated global system into a multipolar international system.
We are not dealing with isolated opposing parties, as any actions by one of them can trigger an escalation from the other as if we are witnessing the checkerboard of a chess game. Such security dilemmas imposed by the nature of the conflict taking place in Ukraine draw a gloomy scene of a protracted and bloody conflict that decides the outcome of the world. If Russia wins, we might actually witness the birth of a new multi-polar world where formerly dominated and exploited countries can have more options and thus a brighter future. If the West wins, however, it might add a century to the life of this global system that grants only a small portion of humanity, namely the collective West, the ability to impose the way of thinking, living, and governing on the rest of the world. A thermonuclear annihilation war is always a possibility too, but hopefully not.
There is no doubt that NATO is trying hard to escalate the war in the Ukraine. Just before the end of the year there were two drones strikes against a major Aerospace Forces base in Engels. The attacks were not very successful, but Russians did die when shrapnel hit a fuel truck which exploded. The importance of that attack was that Engels is located deep inside Russia.
Then there were assorted small attacks against various Russian border posts and towns near the Russian border.
What is left of Russian barracks in Makeevka following a HIMARS strike
Let’s first deal with the second headline. The first thing we need to say is that this was clearly a legal target under the laws of war: NATO hit Russian military personnel, and that is a fully legal target. However, if we look just a tad deeper, we realize that the HIMARS attack was clearly conducted by western “volunteers/advisors”, that is to say NATO personnel who took off their uniform and are under cover. Still, this is still yet another direct NATO attack on Russian soldiers.
[Sidebar: this is the type of attack HIMARS are very good at: precision strikes against fragile targets. HIMARS has very good range and precision, but their warheads are too small to successfully take out harder targets, such as bridges or bunkers. HIMARS, especially backed by the full US/NATO C4ISR capabilities, do represent a major threat to any “soft” targets like, in this case, wooden barracks]
I would note that only a clueless civilian could expect NATO to never do anything, offer no resistance, take no counter-measures, never succeed or hit Russians were in hurts. The truth in warfare is that the enemy will shoot back (at least in a real war, not a counter-insurgency operation against a vastly inferior adversary).
But what about the rest of these strikes, especially those aimed at Russian territory (as it was before the liberation of Ukrainian regions)?
So we need to ask a basic question: what is the goal of these strikes?
Let’s begin with some truisms:
First, none of these strikes will make ANY difference on the actual course of this war. Just like the Israeli strikes against Lebanon or Syria (latest one today, killed two Syrians and damaged the facilities). However, while the Israeli strikes on Syria are for “psychotherapeutic reasons” (I have explained that MANY times in the past), this is not the case with NATO strikes, including the “non-claimed” ones against Engels.
Second, after each of these strikes many people will wonder what Russia will do about it. The precedent is the attack on the Crimean bridge which gave Russia a pretext to switch off the lights in Banderastan. And yes, it was clearly only a pretext, as such massive strikes campaign cannot be quickly planned and executed in a few hours/days. The self-evident truth is that the Russians were quite ready to unleash their strikes long BEFORE the Crimean Bridge attack, but that they were more than happy to have that attack as a pretext (as opposed to a *reason*) to strike.
And, if you wonder, Russia is still conducting such strikes on a daily basis, including strikes involving hundreds of missiles! These follow on strikes are almost not reported in the western media because 1) “Ze” banned any images/videos of the results of these strikes and 2) reporting their true magnitude would undermine the official narrative (including the one about Russia running out of ammo).
Still, NATO does not act just to show that it can act. There is a real, military, purpose behind these strikes. And it is not “just” to provoke Russia into some kind of response (not with tens and even hundreds of Russian missile strikes every day already taking place).
The war is already going on, the Russians are already fighting along a very long frontline, the Russian Aerospace Forces are already striking targets over the entire Ukraine, so what is there more to provoke/trigger?
I submit that there is only one thing which the Russians have not done yet, and that is the fullscale combined arms operation the Russian General Staff is obviously preparing. And since this major offensive is almost certain to happen, the only thing which such NATO strikes could affect is the timing of the attack. And since there is no way that these NATO (pinprick) strikes could delay the Russian offensive, their only possibly goal would be to make it happen sooner.
Why would NATO want the Russian offensive sooner rather than later? In all its other actions, the AngloZionists have tried to draw out this war for as long as possible, so why would they want to make the Russians attack sooner rather than later?
Because the Russian General Staff is waiting for all the “ducks to be lined” up before attacking. Thus by trying to force the Russians into a premature attack date, NATO is, very logically, trying to prevent all the said “ducks” to be “lined up”. In other words, NATO is trying to force the hand of the Russian General Staff by increasing the pressure on the Kremlin to “finally take action”.
Trying to force your enemy into a premature attack makes perfect military sense (as would any effort to seize the initiative and impose your tempo on your enemy).
These efforts are greatly aided by the following categories:
Civilians who don’t understand warfare
Infantiles who get outraged every time NATO successfully strikes Russian targets
Western (fake) “friends of Russia” who mantrically repeat that “Putin is weak/indicisive/naive/fill_the_blank“
Western PSYOPS who want to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubts) in the Russian general public
These four groups form a rather loud crowd who act EXACTLY as the AngloZionist want them to.
So how effective are these NATO efforts?
Here we need to mention a deep cultural difference between the Russian society and the western one: most Russians have a much better understanding of war than the folks in the West. This is true for civilians all the way through the generals. There are many reasons for that, but just to name a few:
Many Russians have military training (basic or more advanced)
Almost every Russian has lost family members during WWII and, therefore, know how ugly war is.
Russian culture, from books to movies, is chock full of war stories, and not of the Tom Clancy type, but the real thing.
Wars in Chechnia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Georgia, Syria, Armenia and many more conflicts have “educated” the Russian society about the painful realities of war.
Unlike the hallucinations of the (fake) “friends of Russia” in the West, the “Strelkovites” and other assorted “allislosters” in Russia have very little traction or credibility with the Russian general public. Simply put – Russians trust Surovikin (and Putin!) much, much, more than these hysterical FUDers because they instinctively feel that what is needed is not anger, but focus.
Conclusion:
NATO is trying really hard to force the Russians into a “NATO schedule” and out of their planned schedule. An added beneficial side-effect from such “for optics only” strikes is to give the morons in Congress a rationale to put even more money into the US MIC.
As for forcing Russia to attack in suboptimal conditions, that won’t happen. Neither Putin, nor Shoigu, nor Gerasimov nor Surovikin are the types who will respond to hysterics with “for optics only” actions (just look at their faces, I mean it!). And this also goes for the entire General Staff.
I fully concur with those who, like Macgregor, have been announcing a major combined arms offensive this Spring, but it will happen when Putin decides it, not when NATO wants it. Right now, the Russian meat grinder is inflicting such losses on the Ukraine that it really makes no sense for the Russians to stop it. But, sooner or later, even this will eventually yield diminishing marginal returns and, by then, the Russian forces (there are three of them around the Ukraine) will be fully ready, trained, equipped and poised to attack.
The big unknown (to us, the Russians probably already know) is what NATO will do when this offensive happens. You can be sure that the “best” minds (relatively speaking) in the US are working on the following task: how to trigger a continental war without directly and officially involving the United States?
I don’t have an answer to this, your guess is as good as mine 🙂
Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon, Pepe Escobar writes.
Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Spare a thought to the Polish farmer snapping pics of a missile wreckage – later indicated to belong to a Ukrainian S-300. So a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII – unleashed via a tawdry plot concocted by Anglo-American “intelligence”.
Such tawdriness was compounded by a ridiculous cover-up: the Ukrainians were firing on Russian missiles from a direction that they could not possibly be coming from. That is: Poland. And then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, sentenced Russia was to blame anyway, because his Kiev vassals were shooting at Russian missiles that should not have been in the air (and they were not).
Call it the Pentagon elevating bald lying into a rather shabby art.
The Anglo-American purpose of this racket was to generate a “world crisis” against Russia. It’s been exposed – this time. That does not mean the usual suspects won’t try it again. Soon.
The main reason is panic. Collective West intel sees how Moscow is finally mobilizing their army – ready to hit the ground next month – while knocking out Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure as a form of Chinese torture.
Those February days of sending only 100,000 troops – and having the DPR and LPR militias plus Wagner commandos and Kadyrov’s Chechens do most of the heavy lifting – are long gone. Overall, Russians and Russophones were facing hordes of Ukrainian military – perhaps as many as 1 million. The “miracle” of it all is that Russians did quite well.
Every military analyst knows the basic rule: an invasion force should number three times the defending force. The Russian Army at the start of the SMO was at a small fraction of that rule. The Russian Armed Forces arguably have a standing army of 1.3 million troops. Surely they could have spared a few tens of thousands more than the initial 100,000. But they did not. It was a political decision.
But now SMO is over: this is CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) territory. A sequence of terrorist attacks – targeting the Nord Streams, the Crimea Bridge, the Black Sea Fleet – finally demonstrated the inevitability of going beyond a mere “military operation”.
And that brings us to Electric War.
Paving the way to a DMZ
The Electric War is being handled essentially as a tactic – leading to the eventual imposition of Russia’s terms in a possible armistice (which neither Anglo-American intel and vassal NATO want).
Even if there was an armistice – widely touted for a few weeks now – that would not end the war. Because the deeper, tacit Russian terms – end of NATO expansion and “indivisibility of security” – were fully spelled out to both Washington and Brussels last December, and subsequently dismissed.
As nothing – conceptually – has changed since then, coupled with the Western weaponization of Ukraine reaching a frenzy, the Putin-era Stavka could not but expand the initial SMO mandate, which remains denazification and demilitarization. Yet now the mandate will have to encompass Kiev and Lviv.
And that starts with the current de-electrification campaign – which goes way beyond the east of the Dnieper and along the Black Sea coast towards Odessa.
That brings us to the key issue of reach and depth of Electric War, in terms of setting up what would be a DMZ – complete with no man’s land – west of the Dnieper to protect Russian areas from NATO artillery, HIMARS and missile attacks.
How deep? 100 km? Not enough. Rather 300 km – as Kiev has already requested artillery with that kind of range.
What’s crucial is that way back in July this was already being extensively discussed in Moscow at the highest Stavka levels.
In an extensive July interview, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov let the cat – diplomatically – out of the bag:
“This process continues, consistently and persistently. It will continue as long as the West, in its impotent rage, desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible, continues to flood Ukraine with more and more long-range weapons. Take the HIMARS. Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.”
The implications are clear.
As much as Washington and NATO are even more “desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible” (and that’s Plan A: there’s no Plan B), geoeconomically the Americans are intensifying the New Great Game: desperation here applies to trying to control energy corridors and setting their price.
Russia remains unfazed – as it continues to invest in Pipelineistan (towards Asia); solidify the multimodal International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with key partners India and Iran; and is setting the price of energy via OPEC+.
A paradise for oligarchic looters
The Straussians/neo-cons and neoliberal-cons permeating the Anglo-American intel/security apparatus – de facto weaponized viruses – won’t relent. They simply cannot afford losing yet another NATO war – and on top of it against “existential threat” Russia.
As the news from the Ukraine battlefields promise to be even grimmer under General Winter, solace at least may be found in the cultural sphere. The Green transition racket, seasoned in a toxic mixed salad with the eugenist Silicon Valley ethos, continues to be a side dish offered with the main course: the Davos “Great Narrative”, former Great Reset, which reared its ugly head, once again, at the G20 in Bali.
That translates as everything going swell as far as the Destruction of Europe project is concerned. De-industrialize and be happy; rainbow-dance to every woke tune on the market; and freeze and burn wood while blessing “renewables” in the altar of European values.
A quick flashback to contextualize where we are is always helpful.
Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly four centuries. The very idea of its independence was invented in Austria during WWI for the purpose of undermining the Russian Army – and that certainly happened. The present “independence” was set up so local Trotskyite oligarchs could loot the nation as a Russia-aligned government was about to move against those oligarchs.
The 2014 Kiev coup was essentially set up by Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski to draw Russia into a new partisan war – as in Afghanistan – and was followed by orders to the Gulf oil haciendas to crash the oil price. Moscow had to protect Russophones in Crimea and Donbass – and that led to more Western sanctions. All of it was a setup.
For 8 years, Moscow refused to send its armies even to Donbass east of the Dnieper (historically part of Mother Russia). The reason: not to be bogged down in another partisan war. The rest of Ukraine, meanwhile, was being looted by oligarchs supported by the West, and plunged into a financial black hole.
The collective West deliberately chose not to finance the black hole. Most of the IMF injections were simply stolen by the oligarchs, and the loot transferred out of the country. These oligarchic looters were of course “protected” by the usual suspects.
It’s always crucial to remember that between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting.
The difference is that the plan of using Ukraine as just a pawn in their game is not working.
On the ground, what has been going on so far are mostly skirmishes, and a few real battles. But with Moscow massing fresh troops for a winter offensive, the Ukrainian Army may end up completely routed.
Russia didn’t look so bad – considering the effectiveness of its mincing machine artillery strikes against Ukrainian fortified positions, and recent planned retreats or positional warfare, keeping casualties down while smashing Ukrainian withering firepower.
The collective West believes it holds the Ukraine proxy war card. Russia bets on reality, where economic cards are food, energy, resources, resource security and a stable economy.
Meanwhile, as if the energy-suicide EU did not have to face a pyramid of ordeals, they can surely expect to have knocking on their door at least 15 million desperate Ukrainians escaping from villages and cities with zero electrical power.
The railway station in – temporarily occupied – Kherson is a graphic example: people show up constantly to warm up and charge their smartphones. The city has no electricity, no heat, and no water.
Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon. That’s why Russia is accumulating serious advantages while “disturbing the dust in a bowl of rose-leaves”.
During this current relative reduction of hostilities in Ukraine, the calm before the storm so to speak, it may be useful to reflect upon the goals of the various geopolitical players, whether stated overtly or intended covertly. This may enable us to make educated guesses as to how events may ultimately unfold.
WHAT DOES RUSSIA WANT?
The party whose openly stated goals appear to align most closely with their defacto goals seems to be Russia, who at the start of the special military operation stated that they wanted the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, the cessation of hostilities against and the autonomy of Donbass (respecting the rights of Russian speakers) and the long term neutrality of Ukraine with no possibility of it being part of NATO, whether defacto (as it currently is) or dejure. Implicit in the latter is the indivisibility of security, the guarantee that US/NATO intermediate range missiles or so-called anti-ballistic missiles (which in reality can be fitted with nuclear warheads and function as INF) will never be stationed in Ukrainian territory. The Russian status of Crimea was never negotiable.
Current situation: having attempted peace negotiations many times but being repeatedly rebuffed by the Oligarchic States of America / Ukraine / NATO (henceforth termed OUN) regarding all the concerns above, and facing ongoing genocidal aggression by the OUN against Donbass, Russia was forced to occupy and denazify much of Eastern/Southeastern Ukraine to protect Russian speaking civilians and Russia’s own security, discovering along the way more than 30 bio-pathogen labs near the border of Russia which had been funded by the USA (as admitted by droolin’ Nuland herself):
Subsequent referenda conducted in the the four liberated oblasts (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson) all overwhelmingly voted to join Russia. Hence ensuring the security of these territories in perpetuity is now a priority. It seems likely that the majority population in Russia will also demand the liberation of Odessa (which has a huge number of Russian speakers, constantly under violent threat by the UkroNazis. Please recall that 48 Russian speakers were killed by the firebombing of the trade union building in Odessa in 2014 by Ukronazis). Odessa was historically a Russian city. The return of Odessa to Russia will shrink the remaining territory of Ukraine to an impoverished land-bound “rump” state, if it continues to exist at all.
There was a time Ukraine had one of the greatest prospects of any European state, with large, fertile steppes producing massive quantities of grain for export, with the lucrative status as an energy hub to distribute Russian gas to Western Europe and a base for heavy industry in Donbass. All of this is now lost (as will likely be Ukraine’s remaining access to the Black Sea) because of a violent corrupt fascist puppet regime that was installed by the USA. The former bread basket of Europe is now the basket case of Europe.
Presently Russia is hammering the crap out of Ukraine, lobbing 3 times more missiles into Ukraine daily than Ukraine can muster (20,000 vs 7,000 according to Colonel Doug MacGregor). “Most missiles launched by Ukraine are ground to air anti-missile missiles” (many are outdated S-300s, one which supposedly went “astray” into Poland, killing two civilians). The OUN also continue to shell the Russian occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, even while insisting that the Russians are shelling themselves.
As far as the previous Russian “retreats” from Kharkov and Kherson were concerned, please see my footnote, to place these events in proper historical perspective.
Where to from here? The Russians only began to seriously target Ukrainian infrastructure (electricity, water etc) eight months into the SMO, after the OUN terrorist attacks against the Nordstream pipelines and Kerch bridge. When the OUN sent drones through the maritime corridor previously designated for peaceful grain export, in order to attack the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, the Russians then proceeded to demolish even more Ukrainian infrastructure. The big question is this: why has Russia not yet destroyed 100% of Ukrainian infrastructure, which it could easily have done months ago? To US analysts, this was a puzzle, because standard practice of the USA has always been to completely destroy vital civilian infrastructure from day one, as in the case of Yugoslavia or Iraq or Libya. Possible explanations for Russian reticence are:
Russia has far greater concern and respect for civilian lives than the USA has ever had, certainly much more so than the terrorist Ukronazis – who were deliberately bombing civilian areas in Donbass for the eight years prior.
Complete interruption of electrical and water supplies in Ukraine will inevitably lead to the abandonment of all western Ukrainian cities and a massive exodus of at least 8 million Ukrainians to the countries West. This, along with the economic and energy hardships now afflicting Western Europe (as a result of their sanctions against Russia backfiring), will lead to massive social unrest, possibly even the collapse of some Western European countries. This horrific prospect is a massive bargaining chip that Russia holds over the West and is a huge incentive for the OUN to sue for peace now, before the worst effects of Winter set in.
As shown above, it will be exceedingly easy for Russia to depopulate all of Ukraine all the way to Lviv, which will achieve the goal of the demilitarisation of Ukraine. This can be achieved right now, even without a single Russian soldier crossing West of the Dnieper river. However it appears that Russia’s preferred option is to achieve demilitarisation of Ukraine without depopulation, so as not to inflict excessive hardship on their cultural kin.
WHAT DO EUROPEANS WANT?
By “Europeans” we must distinguish between the so-called “leaders” of Europe and the ordinary people of Europe. The former are totally corrupt, bought-and-paid-for and in the pockets of the US neocons. The latter are largely clueless and brainwashed by their Mainstream media to adopt mindless anti-Russian hatred and bigotry. As far as can be seen right now, even if the European people could cobble together a vaguely coherent idea of what they may or may not want, their wishes are utterly irrelevant. They have no agency in how events are going to unfold, unless they can overthrow their US controlled puppet governments and install leaders who truly work in their interests. The solutions to the European problems are simple: reverse all sanctions against Russia, request that gas is delivered to them through Nordstream 2B and that the other 3 pipelines are repaired, and agree to total demilitarisation of Ukraine with removal of all Nazis and all NATO “advisers”. These are the best ways to prevent Russia from opening a floodgate of Ukro refugees into the West. Sanity is unlikely to prevail because the Germs in particular seem to be terminally stupid and spineless. So my advice to the Germs is this: get ready for a shitstorm of events: industrial and economic collapse and a massive influx of refugees who you will have to support with your dwindling tax base and rising inflation.
WHAT DO UKRAINIANS WANT?
This is no more relevant than the wishes of flotsam tossed about by a stormy sea .
WHAT DOES THE USA WANT?
There is a huge disconnect between the officially stated goals and covertly pursued goals of the USA, as befits a two faced “non agreement capable” imperialist oligarchy. The official line from the US is that they are engaging in a noble struggle to “free” Europe from being held to ransom by an “unreliable” energy provider, Russia, and that this is a global confrontation between Western “Democratic” and Eastern “Authoritarian” regimes for the future of the world. That is of course total bullshit. In reality, the exact opposites apply. All actions by the US with regard to Russia and Ukraine, dating back not just to 2014 but to 1991, were deceitfully ignoble, the US is utterly focused on the enslavement, not the liberation of Europe (to be permanently kept under the jackboot of US hegemony), Russia has always been a completely reliable provider of cheap energy to Europe and the Oligarchic States of America are completely undemocratic: they neglect the well being of their own citizens while donating hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars to the US MIC. “Authoritarian” Putin has always been careful to address the wishes of the Russian public (via the Duma) and the wishes of the majority populations of Crimea and Donbass (via referenda, which were much better conducted and more legitimate than the recent suspect and dodgy US mid-term elections https://podbay.fm/p/the-duran-podcast/e/1668956802 ).
Some short term goals of the US neocons, as far as sabotaging the sale of Russian energy to Europe and railroading the Europeans into buying very expensive fracked US LNG, seem to have been successful. However this will not work in the medium to long term because expensive fracked LNG can never generate industrial products economically competitive with products manufactured using much cheaper energy eg by China using piped Russian gas. Hence the medium and long term collapse of the German industrial economy is certain (hence they will eventually be unable to buy expensive US LNG) if the Germs continue down this foolish path. I previously devoted an article to the real motivations of the US neocons and oligarchs who have hijacked US policy.
The medium term US tactics and goals were these: to confiscate more than $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves and to impose economic sanctions (more than 10 thousand so far) which would turn the “Ruble to rubble” (as stated by sleepy Joe) and trigger Russian economic collapse. This would create public unrest in Russia which would enable a US sponsored colour revolution to depose Putin in favour of a US designated puppet (echoes of “Yats is our guy, fuck the EU” droolin’ Nuland). Astroturf revolutions are an old tactic taken directly from the CIA playbook, dating back to the antics of Kermit Roosevelt in Tehran. Embroiling Russia in a lengthy resource-sapping war in Ukraine, perpetrated by US terrorist proxies, was designed to weaken Russia as Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin so transparently admitted. Stinkin’ Blinken also admitted the Ukraine situation was a US/NATO proxy war with Russia, just as he had crowed about how the bombing of Nordstream represented a “tremendous opportunity” for the US to sell LNG to Europe.
The US long term goal would eventually be to fragment Russia into smaller states (just as the USSR had previously been broken up, following its embroilment in a lengthy resource-sapping war in Afghanistan, perpetrated by US terrorist proxies). Those smaller post Russian banana republics would each have puppet leaders appointed by the USA, who would then foil the “belt and road” initiative of China, the next target of the US neocons. All of this devious skulduggery has been outlined in many a Beltway think-tank document, especially that from the Rand corporation.
Not only have every single one of those US goals failed, they have backfired spectacularly. Especially laughable is smellin’ Yellin’s “oil price cap” policy, which is being ignored by everybody. The only sane strategy is to negotiate peace with Russia. Nevertheless the position of the US at present remains unchanged: any peaceful economic links between Germany and Russia must be sabotaged at all costs, because it would create an economic-industrial behemoth that, along with China, would sideline the USA into irrelevance on the world stage. The only excuse Germany has for “sanctioning” Russian gas today is the so-called “aggression” of Russia in Ukraine. If a peaceful outcome in Ukraine is achieved, there will no longer be any excuse for Germany to deny itself Russian gas. Hence, from the POV of the USA, peace in Ukraine must be avoided at all costs. The consequence of refusing to achieve a peaceful settlement, of obstinately continuing to lob missiles against the Russians, will be this: the complete and utter destruction of Ukraine by Russia, with massive out-flux of refugees into Western Europe. Does the US care if there are economic and humanitarian catastrophes in the making (and of their making) in Western Europe? Absolutely not. Not only is the USA happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, the USA is happy to fight Russia to the last European.
THE SPECIAL CASE OF TURKEY:
Turkey has been a long standing NATO member. Readers will remember from history that the stationing of US nuclear capable missiles in Turkey was the catalyst for the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Today, Turkey and the OUN are best described as “frenemies”, now leaning towards being enemies. The USA sees Turkey as an unreliable ally and was particularly miffed by the Turkish insistence on buying Russian energy in Rubles, of continuing to honour Mir transactions and its intention to become a Russian natural gas hub, supplying south eastern Europe via the Turkstream pipeline. Erdogan firmly believes that the attempted coup against him in 2016 was perpetrated by Gulenists sponsored by the USA. The recent terrorist bombing in Istanbul which killed 6 and injured 81 was traced to an individual that the Turks claimed was a Kurd from northern Syria who was a proxy of the AngloZionists. We do not know if this is true, but what matters is that the Turks believe this to be true and it is certainly consistent with the history of the US using terrorist proxies. Accordingly, when the US ambassador to Turkey offered his condolences for the bombing, the Turkish interior minister flatly rejected it, saying that Turkey knew who did it, expressing disgust for such US hypocrisy. All US interactions with Turkey in recent years have counter productively served to push it closer towards Russia and the BRICS+ countries.
CONCLUSION: The USA is the worst terrorist state in the world, they represent the greatest threat of global nuclear war to every one of us (USAnians included) – which could cause human extinction. Being an enemy of the USA is dangerous, but being an ally (especially if you are a Germ or a Ukie) is fatal. The Turks are discovering this to their chagrin and are wising up.
Footnote: The AngloEuroZionist mainstream media and their stooge pundits always crow loudly over every transient Pyrrhic victory “won” by the Ukie proxies, while demonstrating a profound ignorance of history and strategy and reality. General Surovikin is nothing if not rational. Given a choice between precariously holding on to Kherson city located on the “wrong” side of the river (which can and will later be recaptured) and preserving the lives of Russian soldiers, he chose his soldiers. All civilians who appreciated the protection of Russia were evacuated. Die hard Ukie ideologues who prefer to freeze and starve this winter in an eviscerated city were allowed to stay.
This echoes the much higher stakes situation of 1812 when General Kutuzov had to choose between Moscow and his army and he chose his army. He allowed Napoleon to march into Moscow which had been stripped of any and all resources that could support the French, who eventually had to withdraw, enabling Russian forces to recapture Moscow. The Russians slaughtered the French as they withdrew. Today’s Ukie/NATO forces are tactically and strategically far more stupid than Napoleon.
Remember the “massive victory” of Ukies advancing into Kharkov oblast empty cow paddocks not long ago? The Russians had staged a tactical withdrawal* and suffered almost no casualties, but enticed the Ukies into open territory where the Ukies were sitting ducks to Russian artillery and rockets. The Ukies lost around 8000 dead. With such a great “success”, it is just a matter of time before the Ukies suicide their way to moribund victory.
(*this was a classic Mongol tactical “withdrawal” which the Kievan Rus had learned from history to their great cost, and now inflicted upon the stupid Ukies to their great cost.)
BTW, Kiev was founded by the primordial Rus, it was the first capital city of the Russian people who were then known as the Kievan Rus. That is historical fact.
EAB is not Russian, knows no Russians and has never been to Russia. Inspired by Tolstoy, he is learning more about Russian history day by day.
For one brief moment we thought that Monty Python had made a comeback, starring Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Surreal because of both characters, the former who returned post-haste from the Caribbean dreaming of a victorious return, the latter who appears to have been responsible for the terrorist attacks on the Nordstream pipelines (so said Truss’ mobile phone) and the Crimea-Kerch Bridge. No surprises here, as she represents the same ruthless British Establishment, which carried out the Litvinenko murder (carried out under ‘white man speak with forked tongue Bliar’) and the bungled Skripal murders (carried out under the son of millionaire slave-traders Cameron), making a clumsy mess of trying to frame Russia for them. Only zombies would believe that Russia was responsible for either mishap. Russia may not be populated with geniuses, but, unlike MI6, it is not populated with morons either.
Then we learned that the latest episode of the Great British Comedy Show was over – though only until the next one – with the utterly incompetent Truss backstabbed and sacked by her own. But the surreal was not over: A multimillionaire Hindu took over the UK Premiership and he has already hinted at cancelling Truss’ intention to increase the ‘defence’ budget of the bankrupt UK by 50% by 2030. This same Hindu banker is now responsible for appointing all bishops of the State-run ‘Church of England’! Yes, it is Monty Python again. The most important thing, however, is that Truss’ crazed fingers have been taken away from the nuclear button. Perhaps her American masters ordered it.
As for ‘Richy’ Sunak, his PR people are presenting him as another nice brown Obama (1). (Remember – the one who refused to close down Guantanamo Bay and murdered people by drone, for which the CIA kindly funded and then awarded him one of their Nobel Peace Prizes?). But already, on Sunak’s watch, the not-so-secret UK secret services have co-ordinated a pathetic drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Of course, just as James Bond was the one who simply did the US’s dirty jobs for them, it was all okayed in Washington first. Hopefully, friends in India might tell Sunak to start behaving like a morally upright Indian, not like a British moral pygmy. Hopefully.
However, the surreal continued when, on 23 October, with the Russian Defence Minister’s phone calls to his US, UK, French and Turkish counterparts about the Russian discovery of a Kiev/MI6 plot to use a ‘dirty’ bomb and blame it on Russia. Having outed the plot, Sergei Shoigu had alerted the US Establishment to the extremism of the now desperate Kiev elite (and their British MI6 operatives). The US put the Kiev crazies in their place, since, after all, the US are the string-pullers and puppets are not allowed to do anything without their express permission. The US duly stated that it has seen no evidence that Russia intends to use nuclear weaponry and President Putin stated that Russia has no plans to use nuclear weapons. The panic and hysteria of the Western media and of others was unfounded; though the mass media did not report the US admission. Panic and hysteria sell.
The third cause of surreal panic was the news that units from a US Airborne Division had been deployed to Romania. In fact, it was only a partial deployment, a rotation prepared months before, not a US threat to take over Odessa using parachute troops. The concept that the US wants to see its own troops being slaughtered in the Ukraine is also surreal. Even they do not want to trigger World War III against a nuclear power for the sake of Monsanto, Cargill and Hunter Biden. Forget it, Gonzalo, the US are cowards. They are not going to die for a piece of Eastern Europe. That is what they pay the Kiev cannon fodder and mercenaries for. To die on their behalf, ‘for a fistful of dollars’.
The Real
Let us now come back to reality. The 87,5% of the world which either supports the Russian campaign to liberate the Ukraine, or else remains neutral towards it, shows the increasing isolation of the Nazi West. And it is now also crystal clear that ‘the West’ is in fact only the USA, just as NATO is only the USA, the Wicked Witch of the West. The rest is just camouflage, a mirage. In Italy, Germany, France, Moldova, the Czech Lands, Romania (the former Defence Minister), Bulgaria, Serbia, even in the UK, dissident voices are protesting. For God’s sake, negotiate with Russia! The Ukraine is their business, not ours, they’re all basically Russkies anyhow. We want gas and food! Who cares about the Nazi puppets in Kiev? More and more all European governments, apart only from the Hungarian, are being seen as what they are – simply US puppet elites, who do not represent their peoples. EU or Non-EU Europe, there is no difference, apart from Hungary, which alone has, in every sense, a popular government. If Nobel Prizes were given non-politically, surely Victor Orban should have won one of them by now.
Here the hypochondriac French are going crazy because China is sanctioning them by depriving them of paracetamol. Perhaps as many as 20% of Western Europeans have now realised that the whole Ukraine affair is a put-up job, arranged by the US, with its British poodle yapping at its feet. Same as Iraq, same as Afghanistan. Same old, same old. The poodle is more papist than the Pope. Over the last two months it is notable that most Ukrainian flags have been taken down in Europe. It is rare to see one now. The working class were never interested, they always knew it was just another operation by the arms industry, but now even the conformist middle-class is taking down its Ukrainian flags. The mirage is over. This Hell-begotten war must end.
More in Europe are beginning to think that maybe President Putin is right. We do indeed need a common economic home, from Reykjavik/Dublin/Lisbon to Vladivostok. This would not be US-led like the EU. The EU is just the political and economic arm of the US in Europe, just as NATO is its military arm. The USE (United States of Europe) has been USED. It is over. All we need now is for Europe to recover its independence from the US invasion and occupation of the 1940s. Then there will be a new EU, Eurasian Union, or EC, Eurasian Confederation. This would be governed not by unelected Eurocrats, but by the elected governments of the sovereign countries of multipolar Eurasia co-operating together.
The terrorist attack on the Kerch/Crimea Bridge prompted Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, putting at least 40% of it out of action and some of it for a very long time. Those strikes are taking place every day. Today 80% of Kiev is without water. A lot of people have no light and no heat and outside at night it is -2. Wait till it is -2 during the day. Don’t poke the bear, Zelensky.
On 20 October we had an indication of what was going to happen once Russia’s partial mobilization of 300,000 was complete – as it is now. In Kherson, near which large Ukrainian forces appear to be massed, the governor Kirill Stremousov declared that: ‘After defeating the planned Kiev regime attacks on Kherson we plan to launch a counter-offensive towards Nikolaev, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk’.
And on 30 October, the same man stated that they were expecting the mass Kiev attack on Kherson by 40,000-60,000 troops, a third of whom are mercenaries. It is said that mercenary pay is $4,000 dollars a week. But what use is that when you are dead?
Many minor attacks by Kiev troops towards Kherson have been defeated in October. Kiev’s offensive capability is constantly being degraded by attrition. Some say that since February 60,000 Kiev troops have died. Others put the dreadful figure at 400,000, but that may well mean 400,000 dead, seriously wounded or captured. Some say that 1,000 Kiev troops are being put out of action every day. Now 82,000 Russian reservists have already been deployed in the Donbass in order to liberate the frontline troops.
If I were a Western leader, I would be thinking: How can I get out of this mess without losing face? Perhaps I could say: ‘Russia has not dared move against any NATO country. NATO has stood firm against Russian aggression. This is another great victory for us’. Having run away and presented the Western Dunkirk in the Ukraine as a victory, next I would sit down and quietly remove all the sanctions. After all, almost exactly sixty years ago, the crushed US removed all its missiles from the Soviet-Turkish border in order to get the USSR to remove all its missiles from off the coast of Cuba ago and everyone knows that was also a great US victory. There is only one way to deal with bullies: Stand up to them. And then you will see that all bullies are cowards and they can run very fast, as from Afghanistan.
The Meta-Real
According to words attributed to President Putin:
‘Before God I have vowed that I will do all I can for the salvation of Russia. It turns out that the world has to be saved, because the demons who have seized control of the West are trying to destroy everything spiritual on the planet. I believe that I will succeed because I have the power and support of the Lord and that is all I need’.
There are very many and very unanimous Orthodox Christian prophecies, like those of the very well-known and quite recent St Laurence of Chernigov, St Kuksha of Odessa, Elder Zosima of Donetsk, Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) and also Elder Jonah (Ignatenko) of Odessa (+ 2012). The latter, who said that Odessa will be liberated last, said: ‘After President Putin there will come a Tsar and there will be peace for a time’.
Listening yet again to Vladimir Putin’s planet-changing talk in Valdai, I am ready to believe it. Listen carefully. He is a genius. President Putin showed tolerance to all, whereas so many of the careerists who figure in the elite of the Russian Orthodox Church, ignoring the clergy and people, show pharisaical intolerance. Sadly, the upper echelons of the Russian Orthodox Church are still stuffed with those corrupted by the corrupt Western money of 1990s Russia. As the Russian proverb says: ‘A fish rots from the head’. But I am quite confident about the body of the fish. And by the way, the same prophets say that the new Tsar will then cleanse the Church of its corrupt and unprincipled careerist-bishops. It is time.
November is the month when it gets cold, the mud freezes, so tanks and transports can move forward and the leaves disappear from the trees, meaning there is no cover for Nazis. As for Western Europe, after an incredibly warm October, with hardly any need for heating, November will definitely bring cold weather. Something is afoot. The great battle?
Tomorrow is November.
31 October 2022
Note:
1. Remember the so subtle Berlusconi’s so subtle remark on first seeing Obama: ‘Nice sun-tan you have there’.
Let’s bring these over embroidered narratives down to kindergarten level so NATO’s huffers, puffers and bluffers can understand.
So here we are, forced to castigate all Russians, those far away people about whom NATO’s scribes know absolutely nothing. Why is that? Why must we waste yet more time debunking NATO’s stupid libels that delightful Russian children’s stories are undermining the fabric of French society? Why is The Economist insisting we burn the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy without even reading, never mind musing on them? What is it about Russian Special Olympians that we must hate them as if they were invading Martians? Is it to make us more despicable Nazis than even the worst of Hitler’s henchmen ever were?
It certainly seems so. We must be outraged if General Armageddon’s troops launch missiles at Kiev that force its children to spend some hours in bunkers but we must not mention that the Kiev junta’s former dictator not only promised the Russian speakers of Donbas that their children would spend their entire lives cowering in such bunkers but that he unleashed his Nazi hordes on them to do just that. We must applaud NATO’s murder of non-combatant Darya Dugina and celebrate the terrorist attack on Crimea’s bridge but be outraged if General Armageddon’s forces respond. We are so brainwashed as to believe that Russians, Armenians and Palestinians must never bark back, that they must lie down like the proverbial Danes.
NATO’s apologists insist (they cannot argue, and thus the blanket censorship) that America, the obvious Nord Stream culprit, is perennially innocent and that the fog of war dictates we must look elsewhere, to forever grope about in the dark and not pinpoint the United States and their European lackeys as the the obvious culprits. To demand a transparent investigation into this terrorist attack or into Israel’s murder of Palestinian Catholic Shireen Abu Akleh or into NATO’s chemical gas attacks in Donbas and Damascus would, NATO’s terrorist apologists tell us, play into Putin’s hands. And, thus we daren’t express our outrage, like all moral people must do and like so few people did under Hitler’s Reich, lest it helps Putin’s truthful narrative gain traction and NATO’s Willing Executioners might believe that Russians, Armenians, Vietnamese, Syrians, Iraqis and Palestinians are as human as us.
For all those crude fibs comprise NATO’s fog of war, NATO’s sugar coated webs of deceit that downplay their Vietnamese genocide and their other unspeakable crimes “from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli. Though NATO can green screen Zelensky all it likes, the unvarnished truth is plainer than the simplest of the fables of Masha and Mishka, the three little piggies or any other child’s story.
Or, for that matter Mother Russia, which is not Churchill’s riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma. Russians are no different from anybody else on either the personal or geo political levels. General Armageddon, General Shoigu and the men and women who serve under them know that they must defend with their lives all that is good in their country, in their families and in their comrades, far too many of whom have already made the ultimate sacrifice only because the reality of this particular version of the three piggies fable is intellectually far above the intellectual capabilities of the enemies they face on their Western borders, as well as in the Caucasus where NATO is determined to once and forever exterminate the Armenians, whose sole hope is Russia and those like India who can see NATO’s much broader chess play with Armenia.
So, let’s bring these over embroidered narratives down to kindergarten level so NATO’s huffers, puffers and bluffers can understand. NATO is morally amiss in Ukraine. Zelensky, von der Leyen, Borrell, the White Helmets, the Azovs, and all their green screened heroes are nothing more than NATO’s bit players, paid to play their parts, recite their lines and do whatever crimes NATO requires of them. No matter how the BBC or any of their other outlets might embellish NATO’s narrative, the underlying motif that NATO is the civilized world’s most lethal enemy is simpler than a child’s first nursery rhyme.
Russia, like Palestine, Syria and Armenia, is much more than some childish Churchillian Matryoshka doll, or Chinese cracker where some puerile riddle is wrapped in a Harry Potter mystery inside a Pirates of the Caribbean enigma. And nor is it, at heart, a Flann O’Brien story or a surreal Kiss of the Spider Woman fairytale where, like the matryoshka dolls, one narrative is embedded inside another.
The core narrative is not only much simpler than any of that but would be instantly understood by all Russian speaking toddlers, both those whose childhoods were scarred by the crimes of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the Zelenskys, Poroshenko, the BBC and their entire rotten crew of fellow travellers, and those further east who were spared those horrors. The people of Russia and Armenia have the right to live in peace and for their combined armies to defend that right and, if that is not expressed plainly enough, Generals Armageddon and Shoigu will increasingly spell it out in an even blunter language that NATO and their cokeheads in Kiev, Helsinki and New Zealand will understand.
It is now dawning, even on self-deluded Western politicians and their presstitute media, that the situation just cannot go on like this. Let us take just the news headlines from 18 October.
The US publication National Interest reports that the Ukraine could only last one month without US aid.
The governor of the province of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, has announced on the Russian Channel One that Kiev Forces have lost 9,800 soldiers in six weeks, together with 320 tanks, 250 infantry carriers, 542 armoured cars, 36 aircraft and 7 helicopters. They fell into the Russian trap, allowing them to advance through the open countryside.
Pictures of the Nordstream pipeline have been published in the Swedish newspaper ‘Expressen’. It was clearly sabotage. Now, who would be interested in doing that? Perhaps the same as those who downed MH 17 in 2014?
The partial mobilisation of 300,000 Russian reservists is nearly complete. Their presence in Donbass will free up the regulars to advance further, although some of the land taken by Kiev forces in September has already been taken back and more is liberated every day.
After seven days of aerial attacks (only two days of them reported in the Western media) on Ukrainian infrastructure, especially on power supplies, even Zelensky has today admitted that 30% of the Kiev regime power stations have been destroyed throughout the Ukraine. This is all in response to his terrorism in Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Belgorod, Moscow (Daria Dugina), and on Nordstream and the Crimean Bridge. What else did he expect?
France is on strike.
Italy is fed up and wants arms deliveries to the Kiev Neo-Nazis to stop.
In the bankrupt UK, to the amazement of all, Truss is still ‘present’, but the Daily Mail website reports that many pubs will have to close for the winter. The landlords cannot afford to pay for heating bills.
In Germany, the Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, has warned of the risk of even hospitals having to close because of the energy crisis.
Some ask: But why did the Russian Federation not start the liberation campaign last February by turning up the pain dial there and then? The answer is simple. It is not just that the Federation underestimated the utter stupidity of NATO and the Kiev junta. It is much more than that, it is quite simply that Russia never did wanted to inflict pain on ordinary Ukrainians and on its own Union soldiers. Ordinary Ukrainians have NEVER been the enemy. Russian targeting has always been of the NATO-supplied and NATO-trained Kiev military. Russians are not Americans who spray the bushes with machine gun bullets and the trees with Agent Orange, or who blast Hamburg and Dresden off the map like the British. They target. They are not terrorists.
Have you not read President Putin’s 30 September speech? Please listen again:
‘I want the Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to hear me now, and I want everyone to remember this: the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, in Kherson and Zaporozhye have become our citizens, forever.
…We call on the Kiev regime to cease fire and all hostilities immediately; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and to return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once. But the choice of people in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson will not be discussed. The decision has been made, and Russia will not betray it.
…We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation.
….Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.
If you do not believe these last words about values, then look into the eyes of the great Russia saint, St Xenia of St Petersburg:
In war, as in life more generally, the concept of tempo is essential.
In his masterpiece Philosophy and Real Politics, British “Leninist” philosopher Raymond Geuss emphasizes “priorities, preferences, timing” (p. 30) as defining differences between “real politics” and the abstract, universalistic philosophy that flattens everything in the unfathomable ignorance of timeless present and depthless surface.
Be reminded of that while you celebrate Putin’s birthday by cheering at the destruction of the Crimean bridge – and the loss of 3 innocent lives. Please be reminded of that. Either one or the other must hold: you plan and execute war – just like anything else – with a view to its intrinsic logic – dictating its own and specific tempo – or else, you go on the offensive and strike with an ear for audience and a view for choreographic photo ops. No, world history and Putin’s, or any other individual’s, private life events being synchronized is not a possibility. That’s called “delusion of reference” and might be a sign of serious mental illness.
The point I’m trying to get across is that, contrary to Ukraine, Russia will not rush to respond to Ukraine’s symbolic provocations in the timing of any mediatic agenda. Big Serge has explained very convincingly that they are probably following the schedule dictated by military and political necessity, rather than the “events” that attract the attention of Western so-called “politicians”. By the way, has Zelensky been reminded of Putin’s b-day by Facebook?
Be it as it may, it would be a mistake to think that, because of the advances of the Ukrainians on the ground, Russia’s offensive is not “proceeding”. While the UA’s junta continues to push Ukraine’s youth forward to be uselessly massacred in occupying some almost empty 2000 sq km under Russian target shooting, global developments unfold in the embarrassed “distraction” of Western media.
Putin in his recent speech, Pope Francis since years ago, and well, just anybody else at this point has been able to tell you that this is a global war. The Nord Stream sabotage at the hands of the Anglo-Americans is only additional, unnecessary evidence that the confrontation with Russia reaches from Caucasus to the Danish Sea and beyond.
Only a few days ago, an anti-French and pro-Russian uprising expelled the latest iteration of Parish’s endeared viceroys in the country. I won’t deny that seeing so many, newly liberated Africans waving the Russian flag moved me. It is just another step in the global anti-colonial, liberation struggle outlined by Putin in his programmatic speech.
If you like counting square km, well Burkina Faso stretches over 274 200. The 74th country in the world by surface, with a population of 20 million: we could say, average size. I know, I know, anything happening South to the Mediterranean and involving Black people is irrelevant until they are slave-traded and “integrated” into the Metropolis: only then, and only if they vote right (i.e. left) Black Lives Matter. But whatever the Western empire’s propaganda is saying – or conceiling – the truth is that the colonies are absolutely vital for its hegemony. Africa is the youngest continent, and possibly the richest in resources: it is no coincidence if the French, British, and nowadays the American continue to feast on it. France will simply be unable to retain its standard of living without its neo-colonies. And that moment is coming. The Central African Republic, Mali, and now Burkina, have recently broken free. And it is everything but unlikely that other states in the area will follow. Nearby, Niger and Chad still suffer under the French yoke, but not passively. The Chadian dictator Idriss Déby died at the hands of the rebel in 2021, and his young son is now leading the country. The local junta has just postponed free elections by another two years, yet obviously, as these are NATO’s friends, you won’t read or hear about violations of democracy.
On to another plexus in world power, the Middle East is undergoing a seismic-range transformation as the divides that defined the region cannot be taken for granted anymore. It is already some time since Turkey has timidly restarted some dialogue with Syria. Iran only drew nearer to Russia and China by entering the SCO. Besides being key in assembling a union of Caspian states, ripe with strategic and economic relevance, including tourism, Teheran is pushed in the arms of the continental powers by the suicidal policies of the West. Divide et impera, divide and rule, has been the leitmotiv of any empire since at least the times of the Romans. The US followed it rather carefully, for instance when they divided Russia from China under Nixon’s administration. Now they’re provoking China in Taiwan at the same time as they’re fighting a hybrid war with Russia in Ukraine, and with their imaginary third arm they believe to be able to overturn the Ayatollahs. Evidently, this hubris has since long divorced reason. The US could not deal the coup the grace in the ‘90s and early 2000s, when Russia and China were busy with their own problems if not actively helping the West. Imagining that it could succeed in after decades of internal decline, while fighting an emboldened decolonizing coalition, and at the same time pursuing contradictory attempts at détente to signal discontinuity with Trump is worse than preposterous. The SCO should reward #Iranianlivesmatter, #Iranrevolution, women cutting hairlocks worldwide and such as its most effective PR campaign.
However relevant, this is not even the most significant and impressive turn that has been taken in recent days. Even Western press could not ignore the “detail” that OPEC+, at its summit in Vienna, has brutally smashed US hopes to avoid a reduction in oil outputs in order to keep the prices low. After having played with his declarations, journalists challenged the Saudi representative, who ended up refusing to answer questions from Reuters. They probably did not get the memo that the imperial arrogance of the US is not swallowed with the same servility all the world over anymore. But most interestingly, the Saudis have also explained that they have not been convinced by Russia about the oil prices but are simply protecting their country’s economic interests. Even more outrageous to American ears! They speak of interests that are not our own! How dare they!
At this point, even Biden must be realizing that there were deeper reasons behind the Saudi prince’s decline of his phone call already in March, besides inflicting him and the American government the umpteenth humiliation on the world stage. Not only the US are finally given the brush-off in one of the most important regions of the world: the latter is actively being reshaped by the hatred of them. The Middle East connects three continents, including the two largest, not to mention oceans and seas, and by controlling its straits the Anglo-American have been able to choke the world economy for well over a century. Add the infamously rich resources of the region. It is no coincidence that the same Raymond Geuss considers the British loss of control of the Suez strait in 1956 as the end of their empire, more than the independence of India. Let’s not forget this was “facilitated” by Khrushchev’s threat at the UN to resort to missiles in case the colonial powers did not withdraw from Egypt.
The region continued to be torn apart by the West’s skillful exploitation of its ideological, social, national, and especially religious diversity: first of all, the conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. These are behind the most dramatic – and almost completely ignored – humanitarian crisis of our time: the devastation of Yemen.
It won’t be easy, but if the interests of such opposite countries as Saudi Arabia and Iran were to align, with a little help by American hostile resentment against the independence of both, and perhaps a friendly nudge by Russia (and China), this would be a massive blow to Western hegemony. Much more than the temporary occupation of I don’t know how many soccer fields in rural Ukraine.
Last but not least, let’s not forget the Americas. One of the most outspoken admirers of Russia, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is currently not represented at the Organization of the American States. Still, when the OAS voted on a resolution to condemn Russia’s referendums on October 7th, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico voted against.
Of course, in the perspective of the West’s rigged “democracy” the 24 states that voted in favor count more. But excepting the US and Canada for obvious reasons, the like of St. Kitts and Nevis are no match to the largest nations and economies of the continent. It’s the same logic why Biden’s bragging about a majority of states condemning Russia at the UN General Assembly is delusional: if three fourth of the countries actually voted in favor, among those abstaining there were India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam and other immense world players. Even more evident is the diplomatic defeat over the resolution to remove representatives of the Venezuelan opposition from the OAS: only the US, Canada, Guatemala and Paraguay voted against. The resolution didn’t pass, due to a significant number of abstainers and the requirement of a 2/3 majority, but is still a resounding slap in the US face in its very backyard.
So, while the heralds of the Empire are cheerfully selling us memes and Tik-Tok videos about the terrorist bonfire on the Crimea bridge, we still retain many and big reasons to nod in re-reading Putin’s diagnosis about the emergence of a free, sovereign, multipolar world and the end of Western hegemony being inevitable.
Jo Red is “lucky enough to be born in Italy: studied a lot, knows nothing”
Damascus had rejected the – American – plan for a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline, to the benefit of Iran-Iraq-Syria (for which a memorandum of understanding was signed).
What followed was a vicious, concerted “Assad must go” campaign: proxy war as the road to regime change. The toxic dial went exponentially up with the instrumentalization of ISIS – yet another chapter of the war of terror (italics mine). Russia blocked ISIS, thus preventing regime change in Damascus. The Empire of Chaos-favored pipeline bit the dust.
Now the Empire finally exacted payback, blowing up existing pipelines – Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Steam 2 (NS2) – carrying or about to carry Russian gas to a key imperial economic competitor: the EU.
We all know by now that Line B of NS2 has not been bombed, or even punctured, and it’s ready to go. Repairing the other three – punctured – lines would not be a problem: a matter of two months, according to naval engineers. Steel on the Nord Streams is thicker than on modern ships. Gazprom has offered to repair them – as long as Europeans behave like grown-ups and accept strict security conditions.
We all know that’s not going to happen. None of the above is discussed across NATOsan media. That means that Plan A by the usual suspects remains in place: creating a contrived natural gas shortage, leading to the de-industrialization of Europe, all part of the Great Reset, rebranded “The Great Narrative”.
Meanwhile, the EU Muppet Show is discussing the ninth sanction package against Russia. Sweden refuses to share with Russia the results of the dodgy intra-NATO “investigation” of itself on who blew up the Nord Streams.
At Russian Energy Week, President Putin summarized the stark facts.
Europe blames Russia for the reliability of its energy supplies even though it was receiving the entire volume it bought under fixed contracts.
The “orchestrators of the Nord Stream terrorist attacks are those who profit from them”.
Repairing Nord Stream strings “would only make sense in the event of continued operation and security”.
Buying gas on the spot market will cause a €300 billion loss for Europe.
The rise in energy prices is not due to the Special Military Operation (SMO), but to the West’s own policies.
Yet the Dead Can Dance show must go on. As the EU forbids itself to buy Russian energy, the Brussels Eurocracy skyrockets their debt to the financial casino. The imperial masters laugh all the way to the bank with this form of collectivism – as they continue to profit from using financial markets to pillage and plunder whole nations.
Which bring us to the clincher: the Straussian/neo-con psychos controlling Washington’s foreign policy eventually might – and the operative word is “might” – stop weaponizing Kiev and start negotiations with Moscow only after their main industrial competitors in Europe go bankrupt.
But even that would not be enough – because one of NATO’s key “invisible” mandates is to capitalize, whatever means necessary, on food resources across the Pontic-Caspian steppe: we’re talking about 1 million km2 of food production from Bulgaria all the way to Russia.
Judo in Kharkov
The SMO has swiftly transitioned into a “soft” CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) even without an official announcement. The no-nonsense approach of the new overall commander with full carte blanche from the Kremlin, General Surovikin, a.k.a. “Armageddon”, speaks for itself.
There are absolutely no indicators whatsoever pointing to a Russian defeat anywhere along the over 1,000 km-long frontline. The spun-to-death withdrawal from Kharkov may have been a masterstroke: the first stage of a judo move that, cloaked in legality, fully developed after the terrorist bombing of Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge.
Let’s look at the retreat from Kharkov as a trap – as in Moscow graphically demonstrating “weakness”. That led the Kiev forces – actually their NATO handlers – to gloat about Russia “fleeing”, abandon all caution, and go for broke, even embarking on a terror spiral, from the assassination of Darya Dugina to the attempted destruction of Krymskiy Most.
In terms of Global South public opinion, it’s already established that General Armageddon’s Daily Morning Missile Show is a legal (italics mine) response to a terrorist state. Putin may have sacrificed, for a while, a piece on the chessboard – Kharkov: after all, the SMO mandate is not to hold terrain, but to demilitarize Ukraine.
Moscow even won post-Kharkov: all the Ukrainian military equipment accumulated in the area was thrown into offensives, just for the Russian Army to merrily engage in non-stop target practice.
And then there’s the real clincher: Kharkov set in motion a series of moves that allowed Putin to eventually go for checkmate, via the missile-heavy “soft” CTO, reducing the collective West to a bunch of headless chickens.
In parallel, the usual suspects continue to relentlessly spin their new nuclear “narrative”. Foreign Minister Lavrov has been forced to repeat ad nauseam that according to Russian nuclear doctrine, a strike may only happen in response to an attack “which endangers the entire existence of the Russian Federation.”
The aim of the D.C. psycho killers – in their wild wet dreams – is to provoke Moscow into using tactical nuclear weapons in the battlefield. That was another vector in rushing the timing of the Crimea Bridge terror attack: after all British intel plans had been swirling for months. That all came to nought.
The hysterical Straussian/neocon propaganda machine is frantically, pre-emptively, blaming Putin: he’s “cornered”, he’s “losing”, he’s “getting desperate” so he’ll launch a nuclear strike.
It’s no wonder the Doomsday Clock set up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 is now placed at only 100 seconds from midnight. Right on “Doom’s doorstep”.
This is where a bunch of American psychos is leading us.
Life at Doom’s doorstep
As the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder is petrified by the startling Double Fail of a massive economic/military attack, Moscow is systematically preparing for the next military offensive. As it stands, it’s clear that the Anglo-American axis will not negotiate. It has not even tried for the past 8 years, and it’s not about to change course, even incited by an angelic chorus ranging from Elon Musk to Pope Francis.
Instead of going Full Timur, accumulating a pyramid of Ukrainian skulls, Putin has summoned eons of Taoist patience to avoid military solutions. Terror on the Crimea Bridge may have been a game-changer. But the velvet gloves are not totally off: General Armageddon’s daily aerial routine may still be seen as a – relatively polite – warning. Even in his latest landmark speech, which contained a savage indictment of the West, Putin made clear he’s always open for negotiations.
Yet by now, Putin and the Security Council know why the Americans simply can’t negotiate. Ukraine may be just a pawn in their game, but it’s still one of Eurasia’s key geopolitical nodes: whoever controls it, enjoys extra strategic depth.
The Russians are very much aware that the usual suspects are obsessed with blowing up the complex process of Eurasia integration – starting with China’s BRI. No wonder important instances of power in Beijing are “uneasy” with the war. Because that’s very bad for business between China and Europe via several trans-Eurasian corridors.
Putin and the Russian Security Council also know that NATO abandoned Afghanistan – an absolutely miserable failure – to place all their chips on Ukraine. So losing both Kabul and Kiev will be the ultimate mortal blow: that means abandoning the 21st Eurasian Century to the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnership.
Sabotage – from the Nord Streams to Krymskiy Most – gives away the desperation game. NATO’s arsenals are virtually empty. What’s left is a war of terror: the Syrianization, actually ISIS-zation of the battlefield. Managed by braindead NATO, acted on the terrain by a cannon fodder horde sprinkled with mercenaries from at least 34 nations.
So Moscow may be forced to go all the way – as the Totally Unplugged Dmitry Medvedev revealed: now this is about eliminating a terrorist regime, totally dismantle its politico-security apparatus and then facilitate the emergence of a different entity. And if NATO still blocks it, direct clash will be inevitable.
NATO’s thin red line is they can’t afford to lose both Kabul and Kiev. Yet it took two acts of terror – on Pipelineistan and on Crimea – to imprint a much starker, burning red line: Russia will not allow the Empire to control Ukraine, whatever it takes. That’s intrinsically linked to the future of the Greater Eurasia Partnership. Welcome to life at Doom’s doorstep.
Following the attack on the Crimea bridge, the entire Ukronazi Internet plus assorted supporters exploded in a supernova of joy and Schadenfreude: the much hated “Putin bridge” was finally down! Hurray!!!
How the Ukronazis see their future (not a fake, its 100% real!)
It was also funny to see that once the Ukronazis realized how stupid (and dangerous!) their proud claims that they were the ones who blew up the truck on the bridge, they decided to blame Putin. So, as per our Ukronazi pals, Putin blew up the “Putin bridge” for some as of yet unnamed purpose, but most definitely an evil one.
Even more hilarious were the hardcore Banderistas à la Aristovich who were celebrating each Russian strike because “now the Russians have one less missile to use”. Clearly, a war-winning mindset 🙂
In fact, the Russians are so evil that the Europeans have decided to exclude Russia from the investigation about what really happened with NS1 and NS2. Which makes sense: the EU cannot let Putin know that he blew up his own pipelines. right? And the fact that Russia is one of the main proprietors of NS1/NS2 does not matter one bit: as always (MH17, Skripal, Navalnyi, etc.) the Russian Snow Niggers need to be treated with the utmost contempt by the European Master Race. That will convince the Russians to take the Eurolemmings seriously.
“Eurologic” at its best…
But, seriously, away from the la-la land of various Nazi supporters and Russian 6th columnists, most of the traffic on the Crimean bridge was restored in less than 24 hours. Then came the Russian response: in a quick series of strikes, Russia switched off the electricity over the entire Ukraine, Lvov (the real capital of Banderastan) included.
Compare the two actions and tell me who is winning and who is losing this war 🙂
Of course, the usual gang of “alternatively gifted” Putin critics will scream that this is all too little too late. As for the Ukronazis, they are already chanting their favorite mantra about “Russia is running out of missiles! Russia is running out of missiles!“. A brilliant war-winning strategy for sure!
Those still capable of critical/rational thought will realize that the sheer magnitude and devastating consequences of the Russian strikes is just a signal that Putin is doing what he has been doing since February:
Acting unilaterally without any efforts to negotiate (but without rejecting any negotiations should somebody in the West come to his/her senses).
Slowly and gradually increase the pain dial not only for the rump Ukraine but also for the entire EU
One more thing: assuming that Russia fired somewhere in the range of 200 missiles (out of stocks having many thousands more) against power stations, communications nodes, railway infrastructure, command posts, field headquarters, transformers, etc. and that this was more than enough to “pull the plug” on a huge country like the Ukraine tells you all you need to know about both the Russian capabilities and the lack of capabilities of Ukronazi air defenses (including old Soviet-era S-300 slamming into the ground the same way US Patriot missiles did during the Gulf War).
By the way – where was the “winning” Ukrainian Air Force? I am sure that they shot down no less than several hundred missiles and aircraft, right?
Lastly, the Russian strikes have continued for a second day, but the SBU has now banned filming any outcomes from Russian strikes, so there is a lot less footage today. Still, a lot at the latest map of strikes, it is clear that the entire country was hit hard for a second time.
So will those poor souls who accuse Putin of “indecision” or “weakness” ever learn their lesson and understand WHY and HOW Putin is dialing up the pain dial?
No, of course not.
They are now so personally involved in trashing Putin at all costs that they simply cannot look at reality without losing face. So they too will double down on their own certitudes even if that means deliberately and systematically ignoring the facts on the ground. As I have said many times, these folks would rather see Russia and Putin lose than Russia and Putin win. You could say that they hate Putin more than they love Russia.
Some of these putatively “pro-Russian” folks are sincere, especially in the West, but utterly incompetent and mislead by Russian 6th columnists: what Lenin would have called useful idiots.
Others are clearly plants of the western letter soup. And, of course, the former have no idea that they are working hand in hand with the latter.
So what comes next? More of the same, of course: unilateral initiatives on the international scene combined with a further, but gradual, increase of the pain dial.
Which leaves one more actor I want to comment upon: the brainwashed people of the Ukraine who think that celebrating terrorist attacks and constantly threatening and even attacking Russia will bring them a happy future in an ethnically pure Nazi homeland of milk and honey.
I am very sad and sorry to have to say that, but the brains of these people also need to be demilitarized and denazified. By acting this way they make themselves into legitimate targets.
In many ways, these strikes also serve an educational purpose: to convince the Ukrainian people that the war is not something which will only happen in the faraway Donbass.
This is what this winter will be all about: bringing the reality of war to the rump-Banderastan and to the EU.
The terror attack on Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge – was the proverbial straw that broke the Eurasian camel’s back.
Russian President Vladimir Putin neatly summarized it: “This is a terrorist attack aimed at destroying the critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation.”
The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, confirmed face-to-face with Putin that Terror on the Bridge was carried out by the SBU – Ukrainian special services.
Bastrykin told Putin, “we have already established the route of the truck, where the explosion took place. Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar… The carriers have been identified. With the help of operatives of the FSB, we managed to identify suspects.”
Russian intel leaked crucial info to military correspondent Alexander Kots. The cargo was ordered by a Ukrainian citizen: explosives packed in 22 pallets, in rolls of film under plastic wrap, were shipped from Bulgaria to the Georgian port of Poti. Afterwards, the cargo was loaded onto a truck with foreign license plates and proceeded overland to Armenia.
Clearance at the Armenia-Russia border was smooth – according to the rules of the Eurasian Customs Union (both Russia and Armenia are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU). The cargo evidently avoided detection through X-rays. This route is standard for truckers traveling to Russia.
The truck then re-entered Georgia and crossed the border into Russia again, but this time through the Upper Lars checkpoint. That’s the same one used by thousands of Russians fleeing partial mobilization. The truck ended up in Armavir, where the cargo was transferred to another truck, under the responsibility of Mahir Yusubov: the one that entered the Crimean bridge coming from the Russian mainland.
Very important: the transport from Armavir to a delivery address in Simferopol should have happened on October 6-7: that is, timed to the birthday of President Putin on Friday the 7th. For some unexplained reason, that was postponed for a day.
The driver of the first truck is already testifying. Yusubov, the driver of the second truck – which exploded on the bridge – was “blind:” he had no idea what he was carrying, and is dead.
At this stage, two conclusions are paramount.
First: This was not a standard ISIS-style truck suicide bombing – the preferred interpretation in the aftermath of the terror attack.
Second: The packaging most certainly took place in Bulgaria. That, as Russian intel has cryptically implied, indicates the involvement of “foreign special services.”
‘A mirage of cause and effect’
What has been revealed in public by Russian intelligence tells only part of the story. An incandescent assessment received by The Cradle from another Russian intel source is way more intriguing.
At least 450 kg of explosives were employed in the blast. Not on the truck, but mounted inside the Crimea Bridge span itself. The white truck was just a decoy by the terrorists “to create a mirage of cause and effect.” When the truck reached the point on the bridge where the explosives were mounted, the explosion took place.
According to the source, railroad employees told investigators that there was a form of electronic hijacking; the terror operators took control of the railway so the train carrying fuel received a command to stop because of a false signal that the road ahead was busy.
Bombs mounted on the bridge spans were a working hypothesis largely debated in Russian military channels over the weekend, as well as the use of underwater drones.
In the end, the quite sophisticated plan could not follow the necessarily rigid timing. There was no alignment by the millimeter between the mounted explosive charges, the passing truck and the fuel train stopped in its tracks. Damage was limited, and easily contained. The charges/truck combo exploded on the outer right lane of the road. Damage was only on two sections of the outer lane, and not much on the railway bridge.
In the end, Terror on the Bridge yielded a short, Pyrrhic PR victory – duly celebrated across the collective West – with negligible practical success: transfer of Russian military cargo by railway resumed in roughly 14 hours.
And that brings us to the key information in the Russian intel source assessment: the whodunnit.
It was a plan by the British MI6, says this source, without offering further details. Which, he elaborates, Russian intel, for a number of reasons, is shadow-playing as “foreign special services.”
It’s quite telling that the Americans rushed to establish plausible deniability. The proverbial “Ukrainian government official” told CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post that the SBU did it. That was a straight confirmation of an Ukrainska Pravda report based on an “unidentified law enforcement official.”
The perfect red line trifecta
Already, over the weekend, it was clear the ultimate red line had been crossed. Russian public opinion and media were furious. For all its status as an engineering marvel, Krymsky Most represents not only critical infrastructure; it is the visual symbol of the return of Crimea to Russia.
Moreover, this was a personal terror attack on Putin and the whole Russian security apparatus.
So we had, in sequence, Ukrainian terrorists blowing up Darya Dugina’s car in a Moscow suburb (they admitted it); US/UK special forces (partially) blowing Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 (they admitted and then retracted); and the terror attack on Krymsky Most (once again: admitted then retracted).
Not to mention the shelling of Russian villages in Belgorod, NATO supplying long-range weapons to Kiev, and the routine execution of Russian soldiers.
Darya Dugina, Nord Streams and Crimea Bridge make it an Act of War trifecta. So this time the response was inevitable – not even waiting for the first meeting since February of the Russian Security Council scheduled for the afternoon of 10 October.
Moscow launched the first wave of a Russian Shock’n Awe without even changing the status of the Special Military Operation (SMO) to Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO), with all its serious military/legal implications.
After all, even before the UN Security Council meeting, Russian public opinion was massively behind taking the gloves off. Putin had not even scheduled bilateral meetings with any of the members. Diplomatic sources hint that the decision to let the hammer come down had already been taken over the weekend.
Shock’n Awe did not wait for the announcement of an ultimatum to Ukraine (that may come in a few days); an official declaration of war (not necessary); or even announcing which ‘”decision-making centers” in Ukraine would be hit.
The lightning strike de facto metastasizing of SMO into CTO means that the regime in Kiev and those supporting it are now considered as legitimate targets, just like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra during the Anti-Terror Operation (ATO) in Syria.
And the change of status – now this is a real war on terror – means that terminating all strands of terrorism, physical, cultural, ideological, are the absolute priority, and not the safety of Ukrainian civilians. During the SMO, safety of civilians was paramount. Even the UN has been forced to admit that in over seven months of SMO the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine has been relatively low.
Enter ‘Commander Armageddon’
The face of Russian Shock’n Awe is Russian Commander of the Aerospace Forces, Army General Sergey Surovikin: the new commander-in-chief of the now totally centralized SMO/CTO.
Questions were being asked non-stop: why didn’t Moscow take this decision way back in February? Well, better late than never. Kiev is now learning they messed with the wrong guy. Surovikin is widely respected – and feared: his nickname is “General Armageddon.” Others call him “Cannibal.” Legendary Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov – also a colonel general in the Russian military – lavishly praises Surovikin as “a real general and warrior, an experienced, strong-willed and far-sighted commander.”
Surovikin has been commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces since 2017; was awarded the title of Hero of Russia for his no-nonsense leadership of the military operation in Syria; and had on the ground experience in Chechnya in the 1990s.
Surovikin is Dr. Shock’n Awe with full carte blanche. That even rendered idle speculations that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov were removed or forced to resign, as speculated by the Wagner group Telegram channel Grey Zone.
It is still possible that Shoigu – widely criticized for recent Russian military setbacks – could be eventually replaced by Tula Governor Alexei Dyumin, and Gerasimov by the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Matovnikov.
That’s almost irrevelant: all eyes are on Surovikin.
MI6 does have some well-placed moles in Moscow, relatively speaking. The Brits had warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the General Staff that the Russians would be launching a “warning strike” this Monday.
What happened was no “warning strike,” but a massive offensive of over 100 cruise missiles launched “from the air, sea and land,” as Putin noted, against Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities.”
MI6 also noted “the next step” will be the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s not a “next step:” it’s already happening. Power supply is completely gone in five regions, including Lviv and Kharkov, and there are serious interruptions in other five, including Kiev.
Over 60 percent of Ukrainian power grids are already knocked out. Over 75 percent of internet traffic is gone. Elon Musk’s Starlink netcentric warfare has been “disconnected” by the Ministry of Defense.
Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.
First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).
Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).
Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).
Ukraine is about to embrace nearly total darkness in the next few days. Politically, that opens a completely new ball game. Considering Moscow’s trademark “strategic ambiguity,” this could be a sort of Desert Storm remixed (massive air strikes preparing a ground offensive); or, more likely, an ‘incentive’ to force NATO to negotiate; or just a relentless, systematic missile offensive mixed with Electronic Warfare (EW) to shatter for good Kiev’s capacity to wage war.
Or it could be all of the above.
How a humiliated western Empire can possibly raise the stakes now, short of going nuclear, remains a key question. Moscow has shown admirable restraint for too long. No one should ever forget that in the real Great Game – how to coordinate the emergence of the multipolar world – Ukraine is just a mere sideshow. But now the sideshow runners better run for cover, because General Armageddon is on the loose.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Multiple missile strikes targeted Ukrainian cities all across the country on Monday morning, according to local officials and media, which attributed the attacks to Russia. This comes two days after a bomb damaged the strategic Crimean Bridge – which Moscow called a Ukrainian terrorist attack.
President Vladimir Zelensky highlighted the attacks on the capital, Kiev and the cities of Dnepr and Zaporozhye, before urging people to take shelter. Local officials in Lviv, Kharkov, and Odessa also reported that their cities came under fire.
The office of Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, reported they had detected at least 75 missiles and claimed they had intercepted 41.
In Kiev, damage from the strikes was reported near the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine [SBU], which is located in the government area of the capital. City officials halted operations of the metro system, and the stations are now being used as shelters for civilians.
Kiev mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, issued a statement via his official Telegram account, saying, “Several explosions in the Shevchenskivskyi district – in the center of the capital.”
At least four explosions were heard, the Kiev Independent reported and according to public broadcaster Suspilne, an explosion was heard near a railway station in the city.
A cloud of black smoke was also reported to be seen rising from one area in the city center.
According to Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko, one rocket fell “right in the center of the city”.
“Cars are burning, and windows have been shattered in houses. There are dead,” he tweeted.
The head of Lviv Region, Maksim Kozitsky, reported that elements of the western province’s energy infrastructure came under attack.
Boris Filatov, the mayor of Dnepr, a major city in central Ukraine, confirmed the strikes and said he could only feel “hatred and the wish to fight,” while urging residents to take shelter.
Vitaly Kim, who heads the southern Nikolaev Region which borders Russia’s Kherson Region, reported dozens of projectiles and a number of kamikaze drones coming from Russian troops. He claimed that Moscow was targeting “critical infrastructure” throughout the country.
With similar accounts coming in from many parts of the country, senior Ukrainian officials have expressed determination to fight Russia. “Our courage will never be destroyed by terrorists’ missiles, even when they hit the heart of our capital,” Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov tweeted, also claiming that Russia’s future is that of “a globally despised rogue terrorist state.”
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the explosion. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has, however, declared in a Twitter message that the bombing was “the beginning.”
The blast came amid a February-present Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, which has been seeking to defend the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk’s pro-Russian population against persecution by Kiev.
Speaking at a rally and concert on Red Square, held in support of the results of the referenda, President Putin recalled how the USSR was formed when Russia created the modern Ukraine. The President stressed that ‘it was Russia that had created the modern Ukraine, transferring significant territories, the historical territories of Russia itself, along with the population, whom no one had asked about where and how they wanted to live, how they wanted to arrange the future of their children and in which State. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the same thing happened: everything was decided by the elites, millions of ordinary citizens were not asked about anything’.
We are still having our minds blown by President Putin’s Speech over a week ago. How many times we have listened to it and watched it. If I may say something personal, I can say that I have not even dared dream for over 40 years that a Russian leader would make such a speech. I thought I would die long before it would happen, even if it did happen. I was waiting for the end of the world and now hope has been given us. The President said it all, summing up an evil millennium of Western history, starting with its worldwide plunder and ending in its shameful Woke ideologies, the denial and destruction of Spiritual Reality, National Sovereignty and Family Life. Yes, this is Satanism against any sort of Spiritual Tradition. And only Russia has dared to oppose this Satanism. Needless to say, we stand behind the Russian Federation 100%. As the President, our President, said: ‘Nothing will be as before’.
The Referenda
The results from the referenda on returning to Russia in four Russian-speaking Ukrainian provinces came in nearly two weeks ago: Donetsk: 99% Lugansk: 98% Zaporozhie: 93% Kherson: 87%. Thus, on 30 September these four provinces, the size of four Belgiums, duly joined the Russian Federation, following the example of the Crimea over eight years ago. The results were interesting, as they showed how popularity for the move ‘declines’ as you move westwards, with Kherson at ‘only’ 87%. However, nobody should be surprised that Russian-speaking areas overwhelmingly, even if ‘only’ 87%, wanted to return to Russia, which is where they belonged until 1922. The voting, ethnicity, linguistic and religious patterns are clear from, for example, the maps and analysis of the Eurasian Research Institute:
Nobody should be surprised, unless of course they have no common sense, or else their common sense has been blinded by their ‘West is Best’ ideology, which is in fact the essence of Nazism. Nearly 10,000,000 people, nearly one quarter of the population of the Crimea-less Ukraine (pre-War population) (more people than those in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Georgia combined), some 20% of the landmass of the Crimea-less Ukraine, an area nearly the size of England, joined the Russian Federation. Out of 25 provinces in the Ukraine before the violent, US-organised overthrow of the democratically-elected Ukrainian government (cost to the US taxpayer: $5 billion) in February 2014, 20 are now left. Who leaves next? As the head of the Republic of the Crimea, Sergei Aksjonov, said on 1 October: ‘The entry of the four provinces into Russia is not the last’. https://news.mail.ru/politics/ 53304440/
Perhaps the next phase of the SMO, once the territory of the four provinces has been completely liberated (unlike Lugansk and Kherson, the northern thirds of both Donetsk and Zaporozhie are still to be liberated), will be to return to Russia the next four eastern and southern provinces, those of Kharkov, Dnipropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa (small parts of Nikolaev and Kharkov have already been liberated). This will bring the Ukraine down to 16 provinces. And that may be it. The next slice of three provinces, which would be Sumy, Poltava and Kirovograd, may not wish to return, but who knows? All can still change. As for the far west of the post-1939 Ukraine, we would suggest that 3-5 provinces will return to Poland, 1 to Romania and 1 to Hungary. This will bring the Kiev Protectorate/Malorossija down to between 9 and 11 provinces, two-fifths of the previous Ukraine, in other words, it will bring it back to its natural borders.
In any case, territory for the Russian Federation, by far the largest country in the world at over 17 million square kilometres, is hardly important. That it has increased in size by 0.7% with the return of four nearly-freed provinces from the Ukraine is not the point. What is important is the will of local people. If they wish to return to Russia, let them. If they do not, let them go elsewhere. The rest is all about making sure that the Ukrainian State is no longer a threat to us and to the Russian people who live there. And the same goes for the situation in other Russian neighbours, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, and for that matter, Moldova, Romania and Poland, the latter two with strong US bases.
All Quiet on the Eastern Front?
Only a couple of weeks ago the State-controlled Western media were going crazy about how the NATO-supplied lemmings of the Kiev regime had taken back 7% of previously lightly Russian-occupied and largely deserted Ukrainian countryside around Kharkov and that Putin was ‘doomed’ (sic). Now they have fallen strangely silent, apart from one or two staged photo opportunities in deserted and destroyed Liman and villages on the border of Lugansk. Of course, this means that the Kiev forces are now in a state of disarray after being trapped and massacred through their ill-considered token ‘advances’ through baited open country, where they have also lost most of their NATO equipment.
Here is why Zelensky is pleading for ever more weapons from the European Political Community, an organisation founded by the besieged European ruling class that met on 6 October. Russia is glad, after all what better way of demilitarising the Ukraine than making them bring themselves and their weapons into the open so that they can be destroyed? Thus, the strategic moves at Liman, ceding 20 square km to the Kiev forces, and allowing Kiev to take a few villages on the edge of Lugansk on 5 October, at enormous cost to them. And here is why on 6 October Zelensky demanded ‘preventive strikes’ against Russia. Clearly, this nuclear-obsessed comedian is desperate and also off his head. This why on 7 October his terrorists created an explosion in an attack on the Kerch Bridge. Does Kiev really think that the vengeance will not be terrible? This the greatest mistake they have made since 2014. This is a turning-point in Kiev’s dirty war.
In Donetsk province the Russian liberation continues here and there, as in Zaitsevo and Otradovka, reported on 6 October, defence continues around Kulyansk, Liman and elsewhere, Russia also destroyed with missiles military barracks (‘residential apartments’ in the Western media!) south of Kiev, but it is relatively quiet. Now anyone who knows anything about military matters will know that in a war ‘quiet’ means that forces are regrouping. ‘Quiet’ means the lull before the Russian storm. Already tens of thousands of troops from the partial mobilisation in Russia announced three weeks ago are arriving near the front.
Quite possibly, in a month from now, in November, when the leaves have fallen and the ground is frozen, there is going to be a huge Russian winter campaign, with rested and increased coalition forces against the now much weakened Kiev forces and their much depleted NATO arms and ammunition. Any lost ground will be taken back tenfold, if not a hundredfold. I would rather not be with the Kiev forces then. There will literally be no hiding place for them. After Kiev’s recent provocations, set up by the CIA/MI6, this may well be the end for Kiev, well before next autumn, when it was predicted that the war would end.
And on the Western Front?
On the USA’s Western Front, i.e. in Western Europe, all is not quiet. Not only is there an economic crisis, with European currencies gradually falling against the dollar. (The rouble has been stable at about 60 to the dollar for the last three months). Also Western Europe was cut off from Russian gas by the US Navy’s sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines and, in part, cut off from the sanctioned Turkstream pipeline. And winter is arriving. Gone the heady days of a very hot summer. This is a tectonic shift. Many have written that Western Europe is committing suicide. That is untrue. The peoples of Western Europe are being murdered – by the US elite and their own treacherous European elites. This is the end of the EU and the UK. As for the murderers, the elites, known as Atlantis, are sinking. Let me explain.
The sources for the myth of Atlantis are found in two of Plato’s dialogues, written in 360 BC. They relate that:
‘It is recorded how your State stopped the campaign of a mighty army, which, setting out from a distant point in the Atlantic Ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe and Asia as well….For in front of….’The Pillars of Heracles,’ (The Straits of Gibraltar) there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together….For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a port with a narrow entrance, but beyond it is a real Ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a Continent’.
He further related that: ‘The Atlanteans had conquered parts of Libya as far as Egypt and the European continent as far as (what is now) the west coast of Italy and enslaved its people. The Athenians led resistance to the Atlantean Empire and prevailed alone against it, freeing the occupied lands. But then there were violent earthquakes and floods and in a single day and night of misfortune all the warlike men in a body sank into the earth and the island of Atlantis likewise disappeared into the depths of the sea….’.
Conclusion
Note the words: ‘a mighty army, which, setting out from a distant point in the Atlantic Ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe and Asia as well’. The identification with the American reality with the Atlantis myth is obvious.
If I may quote from the New Testament:
Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things which thou hast provided be? (Lk 12,20).
Unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish (Luke 13, 5).
First, I want to post a video I found on Twitter (original here) which shows what kind of explosion took place on the Crimean bridge.
From what I have read, a truck filled with explosives blew up, killing three people in a car nearby, and then the flames took over a train also crossing the bridge. That train was full of fuel. It is only thanks to the amazing speed at which the bridge crews reacted that the damage was limited to only 9 wagons and, therefore, to a much shorter segment of the rail tracks.
Looking at the video, one would imagine that the bridge is in ruins. In fact, traffic was reestablished on both rail tracks and the road in less than 24 hours (with the exception of heavy trucks). In other words, this is yet another case of “it is humiliating, but not dangerous” (обидно но не опасно).
But that is an increasingly mistaken notion: this time is also VERY dangerous.
It is self-evident that the Kiev regime would never have had the means, technical and political, to execute such an attack without being told to do so by its masters in the West.
Such an attack, right on the heels of the attacks on of NS1/NS2 shows beyond any doubt that West has now set a course on total terrorist warfare.
This makes sense, since for all the so-called “victories” of the NATO forces in the Ukraine, the reality is that they reconquered a few villages and towns while Russia liberated and then incorporated entire regions.
And Russia did that while always being at a numerical disadvantage
And while inflicting 10:1 KIA ratios.
In other words the West’s “redirection” towards terrorism is an admission of military, economic and political defeat.
While this is hardly a surprise, the West *always* uses terrorism against sovereign governments, this is still a very negative development for Russia.
Simply put, there are always more targets than cops/guards.
Furthermore, terrorists can always chose the time and location of their attacks.
So far, the Ukronazi efforts in Russia yielded very little tangible benefits: the murder of Dugina made her into a martyr, the attack on NS1/NS2 really only hurt Germany and the EU, while the explosion on Crimean Bridge has proven that this is a very hard target which will be extremely hard to destroy short of using a tactical nuke.
Here we all need to remember terrorist attacks on the school in Beslan, the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow, the Budennovsk hospital, the Domodedovo International Airport or the Saint Petersburg subway. All of them were the result of actions by so-called “terrorist groups” all of which were (and still are) run by western special services.
There are basically only two ways to defeat such state-sponsored terrorist attacks:
Infiltrate the so-called terrorist groups and infiltrate the western “parent agencies” which run them.
Convince the general public to go into a “high vigilance” mode.
Basically, the entire Russian society needs to go on a “mental war footing” and remain calm and very vigilant at the same time: not only is Russia under attack by Banderite Nazis, but also by the folks who did 9/11, MH17 (and many other!) and these are the folks who unleashed an entire terrorist campaign against Iran which included bombing, assassinations, sabotage, etc.
Then there is the problem of escalation. The attack on the Crimean Bridge was a clear act of war.
Of course, since no US passports were found conveniently floating in the water, Russia’s response should not be an overt military retaliatory attack. However, I do expect that something will happen soon, most likely in the Ukraine, but probably involving western personnel/assets/facilities.
In conclusion, I expect things to get even worse right up and until the elections in the USA. Not that I have much of a hope that sanity would prevail should the GOP win, but “a tiny little” is better than “none at all”.
In the meantime, it is simply shocking for me to observe the collective orgasm felt by the leaders of the West each time some horror befalls Russia. Truth be told, the fact that they hate us does not surprise me. What surprises me much more is how unapologetically hate-filled and “in your face” these cries of joy are. And I wonder
Do they see that hateful glee in their own eyes when they look in the mirror? When they see a photo of Daria Dugina, do they feel like the “yeah! scored one against Putin!”? When the kangaroo court in the Netherlands declares that it was Russia (or the LDNR) blew up MH17, will they feel that justice has been served and the guilty punished?
I am afraid that asking what they see or do not see is the wrong question which, by the way, Putin answered in his recent speech when he said “these European elites understand everything – they do, but they prefer to serve the interests of others“.
It’s not that they don’t see, instead they don’t care. At all. They never have.
I will end with a question: is the above only true of the European ruling classes or is that true for most people who live in the EU?
What will the well-intentioned and noble Europeans do when the next bloodbath happens in Russia (because sooner or later it will, such is the nature of the terrorist threat)? Will they rejoice and wave their Ukie flags a little stronger or will they just not give a damn?
Moscow reveals that a truck was blown up on the motorway section of the Crimean Bridge from the Taman Peninsula, causing seven fuel tanks of a train traveling to the Crimean peninsula to go up in flames.
The Crimean bridge on fire after the explosion.
The Russian National Anti-Terrorist Committee has reported that a truck exploded on the Crimean Bridge earlier this morning:
“Today, at 6:07 am, a truck was blown up on the motorway section of the Crimean Bridge from the Taman Peninsula, which caused seven fuel tanks of a train traveling to the Crimean peninsula to go up in flames. Two motorway sections of the bridge have partially collapsed. The arch over the land part of the bridge has not been damaged,” the report says.
WATCH: The Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia and Crimea, is on fire and has partially collapsed https://t.co/EGaGF0Eb25
“Ukrainian vandals managed to reach the Crimean Bridge with their bloody hands. They now have something to be proud of: for 23 years of their management, they failed to build anything worthy of attention in Crimea, but they managed to damage the canvas of the Russian bridge,” said Vladimir Konstantinov, head of the Crimean parliament.
“This is the whole essence of the Kiev regime and the Ukrainian state. Death and destruction are the only things of which they are capable,” Konstantinov wrote on his Telegram.
Preliminary reports wrote that what could be a fuel storage tank had caught fire on the Crimean Bridge. However, the viaduct’s navigable arches sustained no damage, according to Oleg Kryuchkov, the head of Russian-controlled Crimea.
“According to preliminary information, a fuel storage tank is on fire <…>. Navigable arches were not damaged. It is too early to speak about causes and consequences. Work to extinguish the blaze is underway,” Kryuchkov wrote in his Telegram channel.
Traffic on the bridge has been suspended due to the incident, according to a spokesperson for the Taman management of federal highways of Russia’s Federal Road Agency to TASS.
“Traffic <…> has been temporarily suspended, personnel of the Russian emergencies ministry and the road service are working on the site to contain the blaze,” she said.
In August, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated that the country will return to “Russian-occupied Crimea” in whatever way it sees fit, without consulting with other countries, Ukrinform reported.
“We know what we are doing. We know where military facilities or warehouses are located in the temporarily occupied territories. The Ukrainian military can work there according to the plan,” he added.
Commenting on whether Crimea can return to Ukraine’s control politically and diplomatically or with military assistance, Zelensky stated: “We do not choose which way we will put an end to this issue.”
Within this context, Washington approved Ukrainian strikes on Crimea using US-made weapons.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 