Two Years After the Start of the SMO, the West is Totally Paralyzed

February 24, 2024

Pepe Escobar

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21^st century geopolitics forever, Pepe Escobar writes.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.

February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21^st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.

There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.

Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.

Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.

Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”

Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.

His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.

Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.

What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.

Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”

None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.

Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin

The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.

Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes –   were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.

All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.

At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:

• Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
• There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
• There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
• The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
• If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.

In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.

That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:

• The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
• Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
• These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
• Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
• Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
• Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
• This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
• Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO.

«فيتنام القرن الـ 21»: غزة تسرّع الانحدار الأميركي

وليد شرارة

الجمعة 29 كانون الأول 2023

نتنياهو يخضع لشركائه: فلنؤجّل «اليوم التالي»

لقد سقط «النظام الليبرالي الدولي»، وهو الاسم الحركي لمنظومة الهيمنة الغربية، في غزة. لم يكُن سرّاً أن هذه المنظومة تعاني منذ أكثر من عقد، من أزمة مستعصية نتيجة تراجع قدرتها على السيطرة العسكرية بفعل الهزائم التي مُنيت بها في العراق وأفغانستان – ومن الممكن إضافة لبنان وغزة هنا -، وانحسار نفوذها الاقتصادي والسياسي مع صعود دور المنافسين غير الغربيين الكبار، كالصين وروسيا والهند، والمتوسّطين، كبقية دول «بريكس». غير أن مشاركة «الغرب الجماعي» في حرب الإبادة الصهيونية ضد الشعب الفلسطيني في غزة، وجّهت ضربة قاضية على الأرجح لمحاولات تجديد صدقية سردية «النظام الليبرالي الدولي» عن نفسه، ومزاعم «التفوق الأخلاقي» للديموقراطيات على ما عداها من الأنظمة السياسية. سعت إدارة جو بايدن إلى تجديد تلك الصدقية المترنحة نتيجة لسياسات إدارة دونالد ترامب، وما سبقها من حروب أميركية تلازمت مع ممارسات إجرامية بحق شعوب بأكملها، أضحت السجون – المسالخ في أبو غريب وغوانتانامو رموزاً لها، لكنها لن تتمكن من ذلك بعد محرقة غزة. فمشاهد جثث الأبرياء المتكدسة أو المتحلّلة أو المبعثرة إلى أشلاء، في شوارع القطاع وأزقته، وفي مستشفياته ومدارسه، وصيرورته أكواماً من الركام، ستحفر عميقاً في وجدان أغلبية وازنة من شعوب العالم، بما فيها الشعوب الغربية، وتكشف الوجه الحقيقي لـ«تحالف الديموقراطيات» العتيد.نحن في الواقع أمام منعطف فكري – سياسي حاسم، بالنسبة إلى نظرة قطاعات معتبرة من تلك الشعوب للولايات المتحدة وأتباعها، لا يقلّ أهمية عن ذلك الذي مثّلته حرب فيتنام في ستينيات القرن الماضي وسبعينياته. فقد أوضحت هذه الأخيرة، آنذاك، الطبيعة الإمبريالية العاتية لـ«الديموقراطية الأعرق»، ما أسهم في تشكل حركة معارضة شعبية عالمية وازنة لسياساتها، أدّت دوراً في تغيّر ميزان القوى الإجمالي لغير مصلحتها، وبقية القصة معروفة للجميع. صحيح أن «جثث الجنود العائدة بالأكياس» وفقاً للتعبير المستخدم حينها، كانت عاملاً أساسياً في انقلاب موقف الرأي العام الأميركي حيال الحرب، غير أن الصحيح أيضاً هو أن جلاء زيف المبررات الرسمية لواشنطن لخوضها دفاعاً عن «الديموقراطية وحقوق الإنسان في مواجهة الشيوعية ومشروعها الشمولي»، بسبب هول الجرائم التي ارتكبها جيشها ضدّ الشعب الفيتنامي، كان بدوره عاملاً مؤثراً في اتساع المعارضة وتجذّرها.

إسرائيل هي التي ترتكب الجرائم اليوم في غزة، لكنها تقوم بذلك بشراكة كاملة مع حليفها الأميركي أولاً، الذي لا يزال يرفض الدعوة إلى وقف إطلاق النار، ويمدّها بالسلاح والعتاد ويحشد الأساطيل ذوداً عنها. هو مدرك بكل تأكيد للتبعات الكارثية لمثل هذه السياسة على صورته ونفوذه على الصعيد الدولي والداخلي الأميركي، ما يفسّر محاولاته التمايز عن ممارسات حليفه الإسرائيلي من خلال حضّه على «احترام القانون الدولي الإنساني»، أو اقتراحه هدناً إنسانية، أو حمله على الانتقال إلى مرحلة جديدة من الحرب، تتخلّلها عمليات خاصة موجّهة ضد تنظيمات المقاومة حصراً. وهي محاولات لن تجدي نفعاً، لأن مسؤولية واشنطن عمّا وقع حتى الآن لا تخفى على أحد. الأسوأ بالنسبة إليها، هو أن تداعي صدقيّة سرديتها يأتي في سياق تحتاج فيه إلى أوسع إجماع داخلي أميركي وغربي حول استراتيجية المواجهة المحتدمة التي تعتمدها ضدّ روسيا والصين.

ربما ستجِد آراء وزير الخارجية الروسي، سيرغي لافروف، أحد أبرز الدعاة منذ سنوات طويلة لضرورة إقامة نظام دولي متعدد الأقطاب، آذاناً صاغية في أنحاء المعمورة، بما فيه في داخل الغرب، في الظروف الراهنة أكثر بكثير من ذي قبل. فقد حذّر لافروف، في مقابلة مع وكالة «تاس»، من أنه «ليس بإمكان أحد في العالم أن يكون متأكداً من الإفلات سالماً من المكائد الغربية في عام 2024. العواصف مستمرة في العالم، وأحد الأسباب هو أن الدوائر الحاكمة في الغرب تثير أزمات على بعد آلاف الكيلومترات من حدودها من أجل حلّ قضاياها على حساب الشعوب الأخرى». جهدت إدارة بايدن منذ اندلاع الحرب الأوكرانية، وهي حرب تشنّها بالوكالة على روسيا، لتوحيد المعسكر الغربي وإنتاج إجماع داخلي في بلدانه ضدّها باعتبارها عدواً ليس للأوكرانيين وحدهم، بل لكل القيم الإنسانية والسياسية المشتركة بين الديموقراطيات. المعركة في عرفها لم تكن جيوسياسية فقط، بل فكرية – عقائدية، ما يسهل إسباغ الطابع الوجودي عليها. وباسم هذا الطابع الوجودي، جرى تبرير ضخ عشرات مليارات الدولارات بصيغة مساعدات عسكرية واقتصادية ومالية لنظام كييف ضد «العدوان الروسي الغاشم»، وإقناع الشعوب الأوروبية باحتمال التداعيات الناجمة عن الحرب، وفي مقدّمتها التضخم المتزايد.

يأتي التورط الغربي في حرب الإبادة الإسرائيلية ضدّ أهل غزة لينسف تلك المبررات «القيمية/ الأخلاقية» من أساسها. قد يستخف البعض بهذا الأمر لكنهم مخطئون. فتبدُّد هذه المبررات، معطوفاً على الفشل الذريع في الميدان للهجوم المضاد الأوكراني، الذي حظي بتطبيل إعلامي – سياسي غربي باعتباره كفيلاً بدحر القوات الروسية، سيفضي بالضرورة إلى مراجعة الحكومات الغربية لحساباتها، وتخفيض سقف توقّعاتها بالنسبة إلى مستقبل النزاع الدائر هناك. سيكون من الأصعب على الحكومات المشار إليها المضيّ في حرب باهظة الكلفة، ومن دون «إنجازات ميدانية»، وفاقدة للمسوّغات بنظر شعوبها، ما يعزّز فرص البحث عن حلول سياسية تأخذ في الاعتبار المطالب الروسية.

المواجهة الاستراتيجية مع الصين، لكونها المنافس الاستراتيجي الأكبر للولايات المتحدة، ستبقى أولوية بالنسبة إلى الإدارة الأميركية الحالية وإلى أيّ إدارة قادمة. لكن المنافسة في ميادين التجارة والاقتصاد والتكنولوجيا لا تعني اتّباع سياسة الاستفزاز المتعمّد والمستمر، وصولاً إلى التدحرج نحو حافة الحرب. مايكل كلير، الخبير في الشؤون الاستراتيجية العسكرية والطاقة، رأى في مقاله الأخير على موقع «توم ديسباتش»، أن قمة سان فرنسيسكو بين الرئيسين الصيني والأميركي مثّلت «خطوة صغيرة إلى الوراء بعيداً عن حافة الهاوية». يشير كلير إلى أن الهدف من القمة بالنسبة إلى الرئيسين كان وقف الانزلاق نحو صدام كارثي والاتفاق على إدارة الخلافات «بطريقة مسؤولة»، غير أن القضايا الخلافية الأبرز، أي تايوان والجزر المتنازع عليها بين الصين وبعض دول جوارها لم تحظَ بالاهتمام الكافي خلالها. ستجرى الانتخابات الرئاسية في تايوان في 13 كانون الثاني 2024، وإذا ما انتصر مرشح «الحزب الديموقراطي التقدمي» الحاكم راهناً، وذو التوجهات الانفصالية، فإن هذا التطور سيعني مضاعفة التوتر مع بكين، وضغوطاً متعاظمة من الجمهوريين ومن الصقور الديموقراطيين على إدارة بايدن لزيادة تسليح الجزيرة والوقوف إلى جانبها في حال تدخّل الصين لمنع الانفصال. وأغلب الظن، فإنّ خيار الدخول في صدام مع الصين سيلاقي معارضة قوية من قطاعات شبابية كبيرة في الولايات المتحدة، في داخل الحزب «الديموقراطي» وفي خارجه، لم تعد مقتنعة بـ«التفوّق الأخلاقي» لحكومة بلادها على منافسيها الخارجيين نظراً إلى تورطها في حرب الإبادة ضد غزة. مستقبل إدارة بايدن لن يكون واعداً، وثمن دماء شهداء غزة سيكون باهظاً بالنسبة إليها وإلى طموحاتها في منطقتنا، وفي نواحي العالم الأخرى.

من ملف : إسرائيل تنقسم حول «اليوم التالي»

فيديوات ذات صلة

مقالات ذات صلة

• الهستيريا الإسرائيلية تجرف محالّ الصرافة
• نتنياهو يخضع لشركائه: فلنؤجّل «اليوم التالي»
• التطبيع مع المذبحة: عن صورة لا تُدهش أحداً!
• تمهيد لإرساء «أحزمة أمنية»: دولة الاستيطان تأكل الضفة

Russia’s FM Lavrov Slams US Double Standards over Israel, Ukraine War

September 24, 2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. (Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry, via Wikimedia Commons)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slammed US double standards over Syria’s Golan Heights and the Donbass region in Ukraine.

Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked to respond to comments made by the US envoy to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield about the need to protect “territorial integrity” in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Lavrov answered by reading a Russian statement on the Donbass:

“The Donbass is very important to Russia’s security,” the statement read.

“As long as Zelensky is in power in Ukraine, as long as NATO is present in Ukraine, militia groups backed by NATO, the Zelensky regime itself – all of these pose a significant security threat to Russia, and as a practical matter, the control of the Donbass in that situation, I think, remains of real importance to Russia’s security. Legal questions are something else. And over time, if the situation were to change in Ukraine, that’s something we’d look at. But we are nowhere near as that.”

Soon after, Lavrov read the text of an interview of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with CNN, on February 8, 2021.

“The Golan is very important to Israel’s security,” Blinken had told CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer.

“As long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself – all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation, I think, remains of real importance to Israel’s security. Legal questions are something else,” Blinken had added.

“And that is the answer to your question,” Lavrov said.

Dobro jutro!

Lavrov accuses U.S. of double standards over Golan Heights, Donbas https://t.co/j0TkMKobJW

— alvaro rojas (@alvarorojasr) September 24, 2023

Thomas-Greenfield made her comments at a press briefing on September 14. When asked about Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights she said that her country’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over that area has not changed.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967 and illegally annexed the area in 1981. In March 2019, former US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation unilaterally recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the territory.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

Donate NOW

‘Welcome to the BRICS 11’

AUG 25, 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

‘No mountains can stop the surging flow of a mighty river.’ With the addition of six new members that add geostrategic clout and geographic depth to the once sputtering BRICS, the multilateral institution is now gathering the momentum needed to reset international relations.

Pepe Escobar

In the end, History was made. Surpassing even the greatest of expectations, the BRICS nations performed a giant step for multipolarity by expanding the group to BRICS 11.  

Starting on January 1, 2024, the five original BRICS members will be joined by Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

No, they won’t turn into an unpronounceable BRIICSSEEUA. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed the song remains the same, with the familiar BRICS acronym to the Global South or Global Majority or “Global Globe” multilateral organization that will shape the contours of a new system of international relations.  

Here is the Johannesburg II Declaration of the 15^th BRICS summit. BRICS 11 is just the start. There’s a long line eager to join; without referring to the dozens of nations (and counting) that have already “expressed their interest”, according to the South Africans, the official list, so far, includes Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belarus, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Guinea, Greece, Honduras, Indonesia, Cuba, Kuwait, Morocco, Mexico, Nigeria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkiye and Syria. 

By next year, most of them will either become BRICS 11 partners or part of the second and third wave of fully-fledged members. The South Africans have stressed that BRICS “will not be limited to just one expansion phase.”

Russia-China leadership, in effect 

The road leading to BRICS 11, during the two days of discussions in Johannesburg, was hard and bumpy, as admitted by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The final result turned out to be a prodigy of trans-continental inclusion. West Asia was aggregated in full force. The Arab world has three full members, as much as Africa. And Brazil strategically lobbied to incorporate troubled Argentina. 

The global GDP-purchasing power parity (PPP) of BRICS 11, as it stands, is now 36 percent (already larger than the G7), and the institution now encompasses 47 percent of the world’s population.

BRICS+ Countries GDP, GDP (PPP) and Debt. (Photo Credit: The Cradle)

G7 Countries GDP, GDP (PPP) and Debt. (Photo Credit: The Cradle)

Even more than a geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, BRICS 11 really breaks the bank on the energy front. By signing up Tehran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, BRICS 11 instantly becomes an oil and gas powerhouse, controlling 39 percent of global oil exports, 45.9 percent of proven reserves and 47.6 percent of all oil produced globally, according to InfoTEK. 

A direct BRICS 11-OPEC+ symbiosis is inevitable (under Russia-Saudi Arabia leadership), not to mention OPEC itself. 

Translation: The collective west may soon lose its power to control global oil prices, and subsequently, the means to enforce its unilateral sanctions. 

A Saudi Arabia directly aligned with Russia-China-India-Iran offers a stunning counterpoint to the US-engineered oil crisis in the early 1970s, when Riyadh started wallowing in petrodollars. That represents the next stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, recently sealed in Beijing.

BRICS+ And G7 Proven Oil Reserves. (Photo Credit: The Cradle)

And that’s exactly what the Russia-China strategic leadership always had in mind. This particular diplomatic masterstroke is rife with meaningful details: BRICS 11 enters the fray on the exact same day, January 1, 2024, when Russia assumes the annual presidency of BRICS. 

Putin announced that the BRICS 11 summit next year will take place in Kazan, the capital city of Russia’s Tatarstan, which will be yet another blow to the west’s irrational, isolation-and-sanctions policies. Next January, expect further integration of the Global South/Global Majority/Global Globe, including even more radical decisions, conducted by the sanctioned-to-oblivion Russian economy – now, incidentally, the 5^th largest in the world by a PPP of over $5 trillion.         

G7 in a coma

The G7, for all practical purposes, has now entered an Intensive Care Unit. The G20 may be next. The new “Global Globe” G20 may be the BRICS 11 – and later on the BRICS 20 or even BRICS 40. By then, the petrodollar will also be on life support in the ICU.

The BRICS 11 climax could not have been accomplished without a stellar performance by the Men of the Match: Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, supported by their respective teams. The Russia-China strategic partnership dominated in Johannesburg and set the major guidelines. We need to be bold and expand; we need to press for reform of the current institutional framework – from the UN Security Council to the IMF and the WTO; and we need to get rid of those institutions that are subjugated by the artificial “rules-based international order.”     

No wonder Xi defined the moment, on the record, as “historic.” Putin went so far as to publicly call on all BRICS 11 to abandon the US dollar and expand trade settlements in national currencies – stressing that BRICS “oppose hegemonies of any kind” and “the exceptional status that some countries aspire to,” not to mention “a policy of continued neo-colonialism.” 

Importantly, as much as the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is celebrating its 10^th anniversary next month, Putin drove home the necessity to:

“…establish a permanent BRICS transport commission, which would deal not only with the North-South project [referring to the INTSC transportation corridor, whose key BRICS members are Russia, Iran and India], but also on a broader scale with the development of logistics and transport corridors, interregional and global.”

Pay attention. That’s Russia-China in synch on connectivity corridors, and they are preparing to further link their continental transportation projects. 

On the financial front, the Central Banks of the current BRICS have been instructed to seriously investigate and increase trading in local currencies.

Putin made a point of being very realistic on de-dollarization: “The issue of the single settlement currency is a complex issue, but we will move toward solving these problems one way or another.” That complemented Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva’s remarks on how the BRICS has started a working group to study the viability of a reference currency. 

In parallel, the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) has welcomed three new members: Bangladesh, Egypt, and UAE. Yet their road to prominence from now will be even steeper.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa publicly praised NDB President Dilma Rousseff’s report on the nine-year-old institution; but Dilma herself stressed again that the bank aims to reach only 30 percent of total loans in currencies bypassing the US dollar. 

That’s hardly enough. Why? It’s up to Sergey Glazyev, the Minister of Macroeconomics at the Eurasia Economic Commission, working under the Russia-led EAEU, to answer the key question: 

“It is necessary to change the statutory documents of this bank. When it was created, I tried to explain to our financial authorities that the capital of the bank should be spread between the national currencies of founding countries. But American agents madly believed in the US dollar. As a result, this bank today is afraid of sanctions and is semi-paralyzed.”  

No mountains can stop a mighty river 

So yes, the challenges ahead are immense. But the drive to succeed is contagious, perhaps best epitomized by Xi’s remarkable speech at the closing ceremony of the BRICS Business Forum, read out by Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao. 

It’s as if Xi had invoked a Mandarin version of the 1967 American pop classic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” He quoted a Chinese proverb: “No mountains can stop the surging flow of a mighty river.” And he reminded his audience that the fight was both noble – and necessary: 

“Whatever resistance there may be, BRICS, a positive and stable force for good, will continue to grow. We will forge stronger BRICS strategic partnership, expand the ‘BRICS Plus’ model, actively advance membership expansion, deepen solidarity and cooperation with other EMDCs [emerging market developing countries], promote global multipolarity and greater democracy in international relations, and help make the international order more just and equitable.”

Now add this profession of faith in humanity to the way the “Global Globe” perceives Russia. Even though the Russian economy’s purchasing power parity is by now ahead of the imperial European vassals that seek to crush it, the Global South’s perception of Moscow is as “one of our own.”  What happened in South Africa made this even more clear, and Russia’s ascendency to the BRICS presidency in four months will crystallize it.

It’s no wonder that the collective west, dazed and confused, now trembles as it feels the earth – 85 percent of it, at least – moving under its feet. 

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

BRICS problems, BRI solutions

JUL 24, 2023

While the five original BRICS states have their geopolitical differences, they are finding enormous common ground on the geoeconomic front as trade volumes surge and trade routes multiply.

Pepe Escobar

As the BRICS approach the most important summit in their history on August 22-24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, some fundamentals need to be observed.  

The top three BRICS cooperation platforms are politics and security, finance and the economy, and culture. So the notion that a new BRICS gold-backed reserve currency will be announced at the South Africa summit is spurious. 

What is in progress, as confirmed by BRICS sherpas, is the R5: a new common payment system. The sherpas are only in the preliminary stages of discussing a new reserve currency which could be gold or commodities-based. The discussions within the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), led by Sergey Glazyev, by comparison, are way more advanced. 

The order of priorities is to get R5 rolling. All current BRICS currencies start with an “R”: renminbi (yuan), ruble, real, rupee, and rand. R5 will allow current members to increase mutual trade by bypassing the US dollar and reducing their US dollar reserves. This is only the first of many practical steps in the long and winding road of de-dollarization.  
An expanded role for the New Development Bank (NDB) – the BRICS bank – is still being discussed. The NDB may, for instance, grant loans denominated in BRICS gold – making it a global unit of account in trade and financial transactions. BRICS exporters will then have to sell their goods against BRICS gold, instead of US dollars, as much as importers from the collective west would have to be willing to pay in BRICS gold. 

That’s a long way away, to put it mildly.  

Frequent discussions with sherpas from Russia and also independent financial operators in the EU and the Persian Gulf always touch on the key problem: imbalances and weak nodes inside the BRICS, which will tend to serially proliferate with the imminent BRICS+ expansion.

Within BRICS, there’s a wealth of serious unsolved dossiers between China-India, while Brazil is squeezed between a list of imperial dictates and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s natural drive to fortify the Global South. Argentina has been all but forced by the usual suspects to “postpone” its admission request to join BRICS+. 
And then there’s the weak link by definition: South Africa. Squeezed between a rock and a hard place, the organizer of the most important summit in BRICS history opted for a humiliating compromise not exactly worthy of an independent Global South middle-ranked power.   

South Africa decided not to receive Russian President Vladimir Putin and opted instead for the presence of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – as Pretoria first suggested to Moscow. The other BRICS members validated the decision.  

The compromise means that Russia will be physically represented by Lavrov while Putin will participate in the whole process – and subsequent decisions – via videoconference.

Translation: Putin tested Pretoria and exposed it to the whole Global South as a fragile node of the “jungle” – actually the Global Majority – easily threatened by the western “garden” gang and not a real independent foreign policy practitioner. 

St. Petersburg-Shanghai via the Arctic 

This South African decision by itself raises serious questions about whether BRICS-led geopolitics is just an illusion. 

Geoeconomically though, the group has entered a whole different ball game, illustrated by the multiple BRICS interconnections with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). 

Chinese trade with BRI nations increased 9.8 percent in the first half of 2023 – compared to the same period last year. That contrasts sharply with the 4.7 percent overall contraction of trade between China and the collective west: Down with the EU by 4.9 percent, and down with the US by 14.5 percent. 

Chinese trade with Russia, meanwhile, alongside exports to South Africa and Singapore, raised exponentially by 78
percent. As an example, late last week, a Chinese cargo set sail from St. Petersburg loaded with fertilizers, chemicals, and paper products. It will cross the Arctic and arrive in Shanghai in early August. 

Zhou Liqun, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Russia, went straight to the point – this is just the start of the “routine operation of the Arctic freight shipping route between China and Russia.” It’s all about “the security of logistical channels” inbuilt in the Russia-China strategic partnership. 

The Arctic Silk Road, from now on, will be increasingly strategic. The Chinese can keep it open at least from July to October every year. And as a bonus, a warming Arctic allows better access to oil/gas resources. A trademark “win-win” – no wonder since 2017 the development of the Arctic Silk Road is part of BRI. 

All of the above shows a sharp shift in the Chinese commercial drive towards the Global South. Trade with China’s BRI partners now amounts to 34.3 percent of China’s total global trade in terms of value – and that number is rising.  

From the UAP railway to the Greater Bay Area 

On the Russian front, all eyes are on the 7,200 km-long, multimodal International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – which alarms the collective west as a de facto replacement of the Suez Canal. The INSTC cuts shipping costs by about 50 percent and saves up to 20 days of travel compared to the Suez route.

INSTC trade – via ship, rail, and roads linking Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, India, and Central Asia – should triple over the next seven years, as Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Saveliev noted at the recent St. Petersburg forum. Russia will invest over $3 billion in the INSTC up to 2030. 

Increasing trade between Russia, Iran, and India via the INSTC connects to something that until recently would be regarded as a UFO: the Trans-Afghan Railway. 

The Trans-Afghan will emerge as a follow-up to something very important that happened last week, when Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan signed a joint protocol to connect the Uzbek and Pakistani networks via Mazar-i-Sharif and Logar in Afghanistan. 

Welcome to the UAP railway – which could be hailed not only as a BRI but also as a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) project – where Tashkent and Islamabad are full members, and Kabul is an observer. Call it a much-needed trade corridor doubling up as a classic Chinese “people-to-people exchange” platform.

The Uzbeks estimate that the 760 km-long railway will reduce travel time by five days and costs by at least 40 percent. The project could be finished by 2027. 

The subsequent 573 km-long Trans-Afghan Railway has already got its road map: it’s bound to connect the intersection of Central and South Asia to ports on the Arabian Sea.  

All of the above expands Chinese trade in several directions. Which brings us to a fascinating symbiosis in progress between south China and West Asia – symbolized by the Greater Bay Area. 

As Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman turbo-charges his immensely ambitious Vision 2030 modernization project, the Greater Bay Area is being hailed by Saudis as no less than “the future of Asia.” 

Every investor from Jeddah to Hong Kong knows that Beijing is aiming to turn the Greater Bay Area into a prime global tech center, centered in Shenzhen, with Hong Kong playing the role of privileged global finance hub and Macau as the cultural hub. 

The Greater Bay Area, not by accident, is a key BRI plank. As a whole, the nine cities in Guangdong, plus Hong Kong and Macau (more than 80 million people, 10 percent of Chinese GDP), will be configured as an astonishing first-class economic powerhouse by 2035, largely overtaking Tokyo Bay, the New York Metro Area, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

With Saudi Arabia aiming to become a full member of both BRI and SCO, Beijing and Riyadh will turbo-charge their tech cooperation on top of energy and infrastructure.

All eyes on South Africa next month are on how BRICS will work to solve its internal issues while organizing the expansion to BRICS+. Who will get to join the club? Saudi Arabia? UAE? Iran? Kazakhstan? Algeria? The top two BRICS countries, China and Russia keep investing in a geoeconomic roll that has dozens of countries lining up to join. 

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

Lukashenko says Prigozhin is back in Russia

July 06, 2023

Source: Agencies

Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Moscow’s Kremlin, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013. (AP)

By Al Mayadeen English

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who last month brokered a deal to end an armed mutiny in Russia, says Yevgeny Prigozhin is back in Russia.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arranged an agreement to stop Russia’s armed mutiny last month, announced on Thursday that Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was no longer in Belarus.

He announced on June 27 that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus as part of the agreement.”

As for Prigozhin, he’s in St Petersburg,” he told reporters on Thursday, “He is not on Belarusian territory.”

This comes after Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov’s statement on Friday when he stressed that Russia will deal with the repercussions created by an attempted armed mutiny by Prigozhin on its own.

During the news briefing, he recalled that Russia has always come out of any predicaments stronger. “This will be the case this time. We feel that this process has begun…Thank you for your concern, but we will deal with it,” he tersely stated.

Lukashenko adds that he intended to hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss the Wagner Group private military company.  

“I intend to meet him [Putin] in the near future,” Lukashenko said, as quoted by the state-run Belta news agency, adding that issues related to the Wagner Group will be discussed.

Read next: How the Russian cook chickened out: Mutiny and bureaucracy

The top Russian diplomat said that Russia does not have to explain to anyone about the attempted armed mutiny and its potential impact on the processes in the country, assuring that Moscow acts transparently.

On the evening of June 23, the Wagner Group took control of an army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, and marched toward Moscow the next day. Prigozhin claimed that his activities were in retaliation for the defense ministry’s purported assault on his group’s field camps, but the ministry denied this.

After speaking with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who was acting at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin decided to put an end to the rebellion, and Lukashenko later acknowledged Prigozhin’s arrival in Belarus.

Related Stories

• Prigozhin now in Belarus: Lukashenko
• Too early to say Wagner mutiny weakened Putin: Milley
• Russia to deal with Prigozhin’s mutiny on its own: Lavrov

Destroying Eastern Ukraine to Save It

JUNE 30, 2023

Photograph Source: Mil.gov.ua – CC BY 4.0

BY MATTHEW HOH

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men.

~PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, American University, June 10, 1963

Following an essay I published earlier this month and the letter the Eisenhower Media Network ran in The New York Times in May, I have heard forceful and passionate protests that Russia had no other option but to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Frankly, I find quite bewildering and concerning this intense insistence that the only option available to Russia was to launch a cross-border invasion, conduct a deliberate occupation of a sovereign country, and commit a clear violation of the Nuremberg Principles and international law.

So far, pre-emptive invasion and occupation have resulted in the deaths and wounding of hundreds of thousands; created over 10 million internal and external refugees, including roughly 3 million into Russia; initiated massive and lasting environmental destruction; and threatened a nuclear world war through dangerous escalation. The execution of this lone and, so by extension, necessary option, as described by its apologists, has achieved limited territorial gains while strengthening NATO. Without a negotiated political settlement, the February 2022 choice of invasion and prolonged war offers continued destabilizing and ruinous violence, accompanied by the ever-present risk of apocalyptic escalation and the emergence of Pandora’s Box opportunities, e.g., a mercenary army on the road to Moscow this past weekend.

While currently successfully achieving its deliberately limited territorial goals, Russia has set forth long-term strategic and political events that undermine its objectives. NATO cohesion and public support are at a point greater than at any time since 1991, NATO armies are modernizing and being funded at historic post-Cold War highs, and NATO membership has expanded along Russia’s 800-mile-long Finnish borders (Swedish and Finnish public support for NATO membership, as has overall Ukrainian public support for NATO membership, has increased markedly since February 2022). Importantly, the US missile bases in Poland and Romania, which Russia understandably sees as a legitimate threat, were never going to be affected by an invasion and occupation of Eastern Ukraine. Even if it were to end tomorrow, the invasion and occupation have now given those US missile bases, along with all of NATO, a raison d’etre that will last at least a generation.

This invasion and occupation have strengthened the position of the right-wing, the nationalists, and the hard-liners in the Ukrainian government and society, including Nazi elements. In the coming years, NATO will build out Ukraine to its standard to include long-range attack aircraft and missiles and eventually ships that can contest Russia in the Black Sea. This arming will occur whether or not Ukraine becomes a formal NATO member. As mentioned, it will give a reason for being to NATO, and it won’t just be any reason; instead, it will become a form of holy obligation. If this horrible war ends, and Russia maintains the territory it has seized, re-taking that territory will become an obsession of religious intensity, a purpose-affirming crusade for many in NATO.

Looking forward, I don’t believe a Russian victory over Ukraine, akin to a World War II-style subjugation, is possible. I don’t think that was ever their goal, and it was never possible. As stated by the Russians, their goals were control of eastern Ukraine, including establishing a corridor to Crimea, a demilitarization of Ukraine through the destruction of the Ukrainian military, and de-Nazification.

Regarding the first goal, the Russians may be able to defend what land they have taken, maintain a stalemate, and perhaps re-take and take incremental territory after this current Ukrainian offensive. However, the Russians, even with their reserve forces, the potential for conscription and further mobilization, and large military-industrial capacity (severely underestimated by the US and NATO before the war and still unrecognized or dismissed by many US and NATO pro-war fabulists) don’t have the ability to march on and conquer Kyiv, nor should they want to. An occupation of hostile central and western Ukraine would be a nightmare akin to the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The second goal, the destruction of the Ukrainian military, has not been met in any permanent sense because of the commitment of the US and NATO to build Ukraine into a de-facto NATO army. Yes, tens of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainian soldiers and thousands of pieces of wrecked machinery and vehicles are the direct consequence of the violence of the Russian Armed Forces and their mercenaries. Ukraine has its mobilization and training troubles, and the stocks from which the West has provided Ukraine weapons, ammunition, and equipment are running low. The ability of the Ukrainian military to forcibly remove Russia back to its February 2022 borders is exceedingly doubtful. Only the introduction of a US and NATO army of hundreds of thousands would be able to accomplish such a task – thankfully there does not appear political will for such an expedition.

This current offensive by Ukraine could lead to a depletion of men, units, equipment, and ammunition that could cause a collapse the Russians could exploit; such over-extending, exhausting and calamitous offensives have led to defeat throughout warfare. But I don’t believe such an event is likely, because of both the real limitations of the Russian army and the Kremlin’s strategic and political desires. I also don’t believe the Ukrainian offensive will meet its objectives. There will be nothing other than stalemate, which will resemble the second half of the Korean War with its trench warfare and limited offensives. Based upon Russian performance in their 2023 winter offensive, the heavy use of minefields and the effective use of drones, the challenges of extending logistics and lines of communication deeper into Ukraine, and the ugly reality of occupying Central and Western Ukraine, the Russians will likely continue to consolidate and strengthen their position in Eastern Ukraine. Yes, both sides may launch over-hyped offensives in the months and years to come if there is no ceasefire and negotiated political settlement. Still, I don’t believe either side can ever achieve military victory, which, effectively, is what the goal of demilitarization is. The best the Russians can do is to declare a triumph over what they have already seized and destroyed.

The third goal, de-Nazification, has previously been addressed with the political forces in Ukraine that Russia describes, correctly to a degree, as Nazis, strengthened due to Russia’s invasion.

Of the three Russian goals of this invasion, the first, limited territorial conquest/liberation (depending on your partisanship), has been arguably successful. While the second goal, the demilitarization of Ukraine, has become a war of attrition with a sacred long-term US and NATO commitment to fully arm Ukraine. The third goal, de-Nazification, has failed at the strategic and political levels.

While defeat on the battlefield is not likely for Russia, neither is victory. It has already been mentioned, but it bears mentioning again foreign wars almost always have a domestic political cost. Russia’s economic, monetary, and financial success over the last year has been remarkable, and its increased ties to other nations, such as becoming the leading fossil fuel exporter to China and India, the first and third biggest economies in the world, is extremely significant. The rejection by dozens of nations of US demands to get in line with its Russia policy is equally important. However, in its essence, war is about being able to waste more than your enemy.

Russia can point to support from many nations, including China and India, yet that support is nowhere near as concrete, whole, and dependable as US and NATO support for Ukraine. With its dollar, the world’s reserve currency, the US can fund this war for as long as there is political will in the US. The dollar’s primacy may now be under assault, but that assault is nascent, and although replacing the post-World War II Bretton Woods monetary system is worthy and needed, such an international replacement for the dollar won’t come soon enough to assist Russia against Ukraine. The great waste of the war in Ukraine will eventually affect Russia politically, economically, materially and spiritually. I can’t finely predict how it will do so, other than knowing the longer the war goes on, the more the war will require greater waste. This war is not fundamentally any different from other wars and the consequences will likely be the same.

Such is how I view the accomplishments of Russia pursuing its supposed only option in February 2022.

To the question of other options, there were many options, economic and diplomatic, available to Russia in February 2022. An energy embargo on Western Europe would have been an obvious possibility. Closing the borders and limiting trade with Ukraine was another choice. If you desire something more historical and theatrical, a naval blockade of Ukraine was imaginable.* Efforts to subvert American economic and monetary hegemony and create alternate trading mechanisms through partnerships with other nations were options. As discussed, we are seeing those efforts play out now.

Meanwhile, diplomatic measures would have sustained the world’s attention and built international support for Moscow. International support for multi-polarization efforts and de-dollarization and the growth of organizations like BRICS and SCO is in large part built upon the bullying, predation, and mendacity of the US and its Collective West partners. Continuing to demonstrate US and NATO misdeeds and bad faith, such as failing to uphold the Minsk II Accords, while not launching an illegal pre-emptive war with its inevitable brutality and war crimes, would have continued that work while laying claim to moral authority.

There are readers now scoffing at such diplomatic options; however, such opportunities were available before the invasion. I say this based not on my assumptions and observations but on what Putin’s advisors said. On February 21, 2022, in a televised meeting, several senior members of Putin’s government, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the current Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and the head of the foreign spy service Sergey Naryshkin advanced the idea of diplomatic efforts rather than war, particularly recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as sovereign entities (similar to the US and NATO recognition of Kosovo). Among other comments offered during the meeting, Lavrov stated talks were progressing with the West, and Medvedev predicted tensions with the West would subside. Based on that televised meeting days before the invasion, it appears that senior members of the Russian government accepted that there were options other than invasion and occupation.

The reality is Russia had a whole range of alternatives, from doing nothing to initiating a full-scale nuclear war. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, David Swanson provided 30 such examples of what Russia could have done otherwise.

The pre-emptive invasion was not only their only option, it also wasn’t their best option. Success in Ukraine to Russia comes as ownership of a demolished, poisoned, and evacuated portion of Eastern Ukraine, an expensive occupation and war of attrition that history tells us will ultimately have a domestic political cost, and a strengthened and rejuvenated NATO. Such a foreign enemy may be politically beneficial to Putin just as Putin and Russia are politically beneficial as bogeymen to the US and NATO. However, the events this past weekend with the Wagner mercenary forces are problematic for Moscow, to put it modestly, and demonstrate quite well how Frankenstein monsters are common elements in modern war. All of these complications, consequences, and inconveniences of war metastasize over time, and while the war might seem manageable now, in 6, 12, or 24 months, today’s current state of the war may appear as halcyon memories of yesterday to Moscow.

I understand there is a difference between available, desired, and politically possible options. I once shared an interview on Al-Jazeera with a former Taliban minister who spoke quite eloquently and poignantly on his failure to make his fellow Taliban leaders understand that George W. Bush had very few political options following the 9/11 attacks. Even if such political limitations were the case, President Bush had other options in the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks. The Bush White House again had other options in 2003 but chose invasion and occupation, just as the Obama White House in 2009 chose escalation in Afghanistan. In both cases, Presidents Bush and Obama claimed they had no other option than military aggression. They used the same arguments against Bashar Assad and Muammar Gaddafi.

This is what is troubling about the argument that Russia had no other options: it validates the Bush, Obama and Trump wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Likewise, it allows the Saudis to say there was no other option than to bomb and blockade Yemen and slaughter and starve 400,000, and it lets the Israelis say that they had no other choice than to send Apache gunships into Jenin this past week. I think it is fair to guarantee that if, or maybe when, the US and Israel attack Iran, a no other options argument will be provided.

We can have a peaceful future by standing with international law and against all cross-border wars of aggression. Violations of this basic framework of sovereignty and international affairs wreck any chance of advancement in relations and deeply damage the institutions and structures available to us and future generations. If we have any chance at mitigating climate change, advancing human rights, ending occupations, and dismantling our nuclear doomsday machines, it must come through solid international institutions, through trust, cooperation and diplomacy, and  through adherence to international law.

No matter how big the white hats we think we wear, regardless of which side we support, the reality is that war is a force outside of human control, one that will make our righteousness and morality an agent of its destruction. The war in Ukraine is not a simple war of good vs evil. The costs of this war will far outweigh any offered rationales, righteous Manichean arguments or apologies made by either side. We still are unaware of the coming consequences of this war, just as in 1915, the idea of war for another three years, the loss of empires, the Spanish Flu, or a second world war were unimaginable.

Whoever “wins” in eastern Ukraine will win a land depopulated and bastioned by destroyed infrastructure. This land will be polluted for generations by the military toxins of war and ridden with land mines and unexploded ordnance. Very likely, Ukrainian mothers will suffer the same as Iraqi, Afghan, and SE Asian mothers by giving birth for generations to dead, deformed, and sick children due to the undying toxic legacies of modern war. Children and their families, decades from now, will be punished for this madness in Ukraine, just as children and their families continue to be punished throughout “post-conflict” countries. Years from now, as they still die and suffer, will you tell them there was no other option?

The Russian people currently support the war, and this has shored up domestic political support for Putin; in fact, it seems as if the most substantial opposition to Putin comes from those who feel the war is not being waged hard enough – which should give everyone who is bellicose and buoyant on the war in the West pause. Do those present domestic political benefits to the Kremlin, along with Moscow’s middle finger to the US and NATO, outweigh the risks that come with forever conflict in Ukraine for Russia? Is the massive and catastrophic killing, suffering, and destruction, the forever obscene sorrow, horror, and guilt that will not end when the guns go silent, justifiable based on the acquisition of land destroyed, depopulated, and polluted?

The centenarian war criminal Henry Kissinger did get some things right. One of Kissinger’s most famous admonishments, lost on Democratic and Republican White Houses and American media over decades, is that you don’t judge a policy by how it starts but by how it ends. This supposed sole Russian option of pre-emptive invasion and occupation has put Russia into a position that might have met limited and immediate territorial objectives and solidified a storyline of defense against encroaching foreign powers, of which there is a good deal of truth. But with the death and the destruction, the consecration of NATO, and the future uncertainty and instability, how can it be argued that invasion was the best option, let alone the only option?

I understand others may say Russia had no other option, just as I can go and visit with many in DC who will continue to say Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump had no other options for their wars. Such a defense of Russia’s invasion comes to me as partisan and not principled, as seeking victory rather than peace and dismissing suffering for the sake of a narrative. It falls into the binary trap with which our political and media structures demand we accept. Either with us or against us, as George W. Bush would say.

However, there is always another option other than war. To allow ourselves to be banded into one of two camps is a betrayal of our intellectual and moral duties. “Neither King nor Kaiser!” the martyred Irish rebel James Connolly proclaimed. We can say No to NATO and Russia Out of Ukraine. We can oppose oligarchs in DC, London, Kyiv and Moscow. We can support the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia while condemning the war crimes of all governments. We can always find options other than war and we can always believe peace is possible.

*Blockades and other forms of coercive economic measures are war crimes, just as the US sanctions against are war crimes. More than 1 in 4 countries are under US, EU and UN sanctions.

Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For Peace and World Beyond War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama Administration. He previously had been in Iraq with a State Department team and with the U.S. Marines. He is a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy.

What happens in Russia after The Longest Day?

June 27 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Pepe Escobar

Following Wagner’s ‘rebellion’ – which was nothing more than a blatant coup attempt, and a PR stunt demonstrated by Prighozin’s top-notch theatrics – NATO and the Collective West’s excitement over the possibility of Russia descending into chaos and civil war were quickly turned into utter disappointment.

The first draft of the extraordinary events that took place in Russia on The Longest Day – Saturday, June 24 – leads us to a whole new can of worms.    

The Global Majority badly wants to know what happens next. Let’s examine the key pieces in the chessboard.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is cutting to the chase: he has reminded everyone that the Hegemon’s modus operandi is to back coup attempts whenever it can benefit. This dovetails with the fact that the FSB is actively investigating whether and how Western intel was involved in The Longest Day.

President Putin could not have been more unequivocal: 

“They [the West and Ukraine] wanted Russian soldiers to kill each other, so that soldiers and civilians would die, so that in the end Russia would lose, and our society would break apart and choke on bloody civil strife (…) They rubbed their hands, dreaming of getting revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counter-offensive, but they miscalculated.” 

Cue to the collective West – from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on down – frantically trying to distance itself even as the CIA leaked, via its trademark mouthpiece, the Washington Post, that they knew about “the rebellion.” 

The agenda was painfully obvious: Kiev losing on all fronts would be ritually buried by wall-to-wall coverage of the fake Russian “civil war.”

There’s no smoking gun – yet. But the FSB is following several leads to demonstrate how the “the rebellion” was set up by CIA/NATO. The spectacular failure makes the upcoming NATO July 11 summit in Vilnius even more incandescent. 

The Chinese, much like Lavrov, also cut to the chase: the Global Times asserted that the idea of “Wagner’s revolt weakening Putin’s authority is wishful thinking of the West,” with the Kremlin’s “strong capacity of deterrence” further increasing its authority. That’s exactly the reading of the Russian street.  

The Chinese reached their conclusion after a crucial visit by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko, who promptly flew to Beijing on Sunday, June 25. This is how the iron-clad strategic partnership works in practice.  

“The rebellion” as a P.R. stunt

Arguably the best explanation so far of the nuts and bolts of The Longest Day has been offered by Rostislav Ischenko.

The Global Majority will rejoice that Prighozin’s theatrics, in the end, left the collective West dazed, confused, and shattered: wasn’t the whole thing supposed to unleash total chaos inside Russian society and the army? 

Even as the fake, lightning-quick “mutiny” was in progress, Russia continued to pound Kiev’s forces – which, by the way, were spinning that the main phase of the “counter-offensive” was being launched exactly on June 24 at night. That was, predictably, yet another bluff.    

Back to the Russian street. “The rebellion” – inbuilt in a very convoluted plot – in the end was widely interpreted as just another military demonstration (by master of ceremonies Prighozin, not by the overwhelming majority of Wagner soldiers). “The rebellion” turned out to be a Western P.R. stunt, a series of (ultimately faded) pictures for global consumption.  

But now things are bound to get way more serious. 

Lavrov, once again, pointed to the role being played by the ever-self-aggrandized Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron, right up there with the United States: “Macron clearly saw in the developments an opportunity to realize the threat of Ukraine dealing Russia a strategic blow, a mantra NATO leaders have been holding onto.”

So just like Kiev and the collective Western media, Lavrov added, Macron remains part of a single “machine” working against Moscow. That ties up with Putin, who stated of Macron’s Sunday intervention that “the entire Western military, economic and information machine has been set in motion against us.” 

And that’s a fact. 

Betting on a “long-term economic blockade”

Another fact adds to the more ominous clouds on the horizon.  

While no one was paying attention, a mini-Congress of national security officials took place in Copenhagen exactly on the fateful 24 and 25 of June.

They were arguably discussing “peace in Ukraine.” The chairman was none other than US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.  

Present at the meeting were Brazil, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Denmark, India, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Africa, Japan, Ukraine – and the proverbial Eurocrat of the non-sovereign EU. 

Note the G7 majority, side by side with three BRICS and two aspiring BRICS+ members.

“Peace in Ukraine” means, in this context, the so-called 10-point “Zelensky peace plan,” which implies a total Russian strategic defeat – complete with the restoration of Ukraine within the borders of 1991 and payment of colossal “reparations” by Moscow.

No wonder China was not part of it. Yet three BRICS – call them the weakest nodes – were there. BRICS and BRICS+ prospective members compose the six “swing states” which will be relentlessly courted and/or submitted to hardcore Hybrid Wars by the Hegemon to “behave” when it comes to Ukraine: Brazil, India, South Africa, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.  

Then there’s the 11^th EU sanctions package, which is taking the economic war against Russia to a whole new level, as attested by Acting Permanent Representative to the EU, Kirill Logvinov.

Logvinov explained how “Brussels intends to drag as many countries as possible into this war (…) There is a clear shift from a failed blitzkrieg, which was said to be aimed at causing irreparable damage to Russia, to a multi-move game with the goal of establishing a kind of long-term economic blockade against our country.”

That’s undiluted Hybrid War territory – and the key targets are the six “swing states.” 

Logvinov remarked how “the EU always prefers to use blackmail and coercion. Since the EU remains the biggest economic partner for many countries, as well as a source of investment and a financial donor, Brussels clearly has enough leverage to exert pressure. So, the EU’s fight against the bypassing of sanctions is expected to be lengthy and uncompromising.”

So welcome to extraterritorial sanctions, EU-style, blacklisting companies from third countries “suspected” of re-exporting banned goods to Russia or engaged in oil trade without taking the so-called Russian oil price cap into account.

Fun in the Belarussian sun 

Among so many cheap thrills, what will be the next role of the main actor in The Longest Day (and even before)? And does it matter? 

Chinese scholars are fond of reminding us that during China’s periods of turmoil – for instance, at the end of the Han and Tang dynasties – the reason was always warlords not following orders from the Emperor.  

The Ottoman Empire’s Janissaries – their Wagner at the time – were meant to protect the Sultan and fight his wars. They ended up deciding who could be Sultan – as much as Roman Empire legionaries ended up deciding who would be Emperor. 

Chinese advice is always prescient: Beware of how you use your soldiers. Make sure they believe in what they’re fighting for. Otherwise, they’ll turn around to bite you.

And that leads us to Prighozin once again changing his story (he’s a specialist on the matter).  

He’s now saying that June 23-24 was just a mere “demonstration” to express his discontent. The main objective was to prove the superiority of Wagner over the Russian Army. 

Well, everybody knew about that: Wagner soldiers have been in combat day in, day out for over 10 years now in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine.

And that’s why he could boast that “Wagner advanced for 700 km without meeting any resistance. If Russia had asked them to be in charge of the war from the beginning, that would have been over by the night of February 24, 2022.”

Prighozin is also alluding to a deal with Belarus – laying extra fog of war around a possible transfer of Wagner under Belarus jurisdiction. NATO is already terrified in advance. Expect more ballooning military budgets – to be imposed at the Vilnius summit next month. 

Camps to accommodate at least 8,000 Wagner fighters are already being built in Belarus, in the Mogilev region – according to “Vyorstka” (“Layout”). 

The real story behind it is that Belarus, for quite a while, has been expecting a possible attack from rabid Poland. In parallel, as much as sending NATO into extra freakout mode, Moscow could be contemplating the opening of a new front between Lviv and Kiev.  

Wagner in Belarus makes total sense. The Belarussian Army is not exactly strong. Wagner secures Russia’s western front. That will raise major hell on NATO – even figuratively, and force them to spend even more astronomical sums. And Wagner can merrily use airports in Belarus to pursue its – rebranded – activities in West Asia and Africa.  

Everything that happened since The Longest Day is part of a new dramatic plot twist in a running series – way more gripping than whatever Netflix could offer. 

Yet what the majority of Russian public opinion really seems to expect is not another farcical Ride of the Valkyrie. They expect a serious draining of the Soviet-style bureaucratic swamp, and a real commitment to get this “almost war” to its logical conclusion as quickly as possible.     

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

Saudi-Russian concord is the secret behind OPEC+

June 07 2023

Behind the raft of OPEC+ production decisions riling the collective west lies a tight Russian-Saudi strategy and enhanced Russian-Iranian energy cooperation.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By MK Bhadrakumar

A curious thing happened in Vienna on Sunday just as the 35th Ministerial Meeting of OPEC+ was about to start at its headquarters. Three princely western news organizations – Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal – were barred from entering the OPEC premises. When asked about it, pat came the reply: “This is our house.” 

Indeed, OPEC officials were left with no option other than an unorthodox way of “mood setting,” given their heightened sensitivity about the wild stories disseminated in the western media about disagreements between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two high flyers in OPEC+. 

To be sure, OPEC+ touches raw nerves in Washington even seven years after the group took shape as the brainwave of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). The two leaders intended that they would have more control over the global crude oil market. The impetus to realism on the part of Moscow and Riyadh has only grown since 2016, and will crystalize further after the US-led G7 inserted itself into rule making in the world oil market last year, threatening to fragment the entire ecosystem. 

Saudi Arabia’s BRICS aspirations

Neither Russia nor Saudi Arabia can afford a break-up of OPEC+. In fact, had there been no OPEC+ today, there would be an urgent need to create one, as both Moscow and Riyadh have, in different ways, come under US pressure on account of their global pre-eminence as energy producers. 

Their potential to be key players in the emerging multipolar world is giving Washington the jitters. Saudi Arabia has formally applied for BRICS membership and sought to join the New Development Bank, the multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states and headquartered in Shanghai, China.

In fact, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud was present in Cape Town last week for the BRICS ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, Bin Farhan met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Russian readout underscored the depth and profundity of the current level of relations between the two counties. 

Saudi Arabia is tiptoeing toward BRICS at a historic juncture when the group is reportedly all set to create its own currency at its forthcoming summit in Durban, South Africa. This, of course, will be a calamitous development for the petrodollar – the pillar of the western banking system – and holds the potential to create a new global oil market. 

Russia-Iran oil cooperation

To digress a bit, on 18 May, Russia and Iran signed 10 documents for cooperation in the oil industry, comprising six memorandums of understanding, two contracts, one agreement, and a roadmap related to bilateral cooperation in the fields of industry, transfer of technology, and oil recovery enhancement.

These agreements allow Russia (together with China in separate agreements) to have its companies present in any oil and gas field in Iran that Moscow chooses. Following the signing ceremony in Tehran, the visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is also the co-chair of the Permanent Russian-Iranian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, stated that the two countries held negotiations on banking interactions and using their national currencies in the bilateral transactions.

Quite obviously, Iran’s strategic ties with Russia is a spectre that haunts the administration of US President Joe Biden. In that context, Saudi Arabia’s gravitation toward BRICS adds to the angst in the western mind. It is hardly surprising that feverish US attempts are afoot to undermine OPEC+. 

Agreement on oil production cuts

No sooner than the OPEC+ ministerial at Vienna ended, Deputy PM Novak made clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia were in lockstep on the OPEC+ deals:

“No, there were no [Russian-Saudi] differences. We always find common solutions. For years, our agreements have been in force in the interests of the market, in the interests of the countries participating in the agreement, and in the interests of both exporters and producers. We always find common solutions with Saudi Arabia. Naturally, we always have preliminary discussions, but nevertheless we always reach concord.” 

In Moscow on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The Russian Federation is a member of the joint understanding (in Vienna). The OPEC+ format continues its work, there are common agreements that, of course, everyone will follow. Of course, this format retains its importance and its significance for ensuring stability in international energy markets.” 

The decisions taken by the OPEC+ ministerial after seven hours of talks amply bears out the Saudi-Russian “concord”: An agreement on pegging the 2024 baselines at 40.46 million barrels a day, against which the production cuts are to be measured; reduction of overall production targets from 2024 by a further 1.4 million bpd in total; the deep cut by Saudi Arabia to its output in July on top of a broader OPEC+ deal to limit supply into 2024 as the group seeks to boost flagging oil prices; Russia’s extension of its voluntary oil production cut by 500,000 barrels daily till end-December 2024, which will be calculated from the 2024 quota, which in turn has now been reduced to 9.828 million barrels a day as part of the deal. 

OPEC+ seeks ‘stability and market balance’

Novak told Russian TV on Sunday that OPEC Plus nations have taken “an important decision to extend the voluntary cuts announced by the countries from 1 May, 2023 in order to balance the market. This is 1.66 million barrels a day on top of what was announced last October … So, in aggregate terms, it is 3.66 million barrels undertaken by the OPEC+ countries to ensure stable market operation.” He continued: 

“The agreement is in force until the end of 2023, that is why we discussed the issue of its possible extension until the end of 2024 for quite a long time today. Two major decisions have been passed: first, to extend the existing agreement until the end of 2024, and, second, to extend throughout 2024 voluntary cuts by 1.66 million barrels a day starting 1st May undertaken by nine countries.” 

“This will make it possible to have long-term forecasts of the effect of our agreement for 18 months ahead. These are key decisions we discussed and passed today… Naturally, we have possibilities to adjust our decisions. If necessary, we will do so to ensure the market stability so that it is balanced and clear for investors, buyers, and exporters. For all market players.” 

Indeed, as the Saudis have sought, oil prices rose on Monday, with global benchmark Brent oil climbing toward $78 a barrel. On the whole, if there has been any “winner” in the OPEC+ talks on Sunday, it must be the UAE, which gets a boost to its production limit for next year at the expense of some African members who were asked to give up part of their unused quotas. 

The finely balanced OPEC+ decisions “to achieve and sustain a stable oil market, to provide long-term guidance for the market, in line with the successful approach of being precautious, proactive, and pre-emptive,” – to borrow from the OPEC press release on Sunday – have only been possible due to the trust and mutual confidence among the key players within the group, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in particular. 

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

Saudi FM attends ‘BRICS Friends’ meeting in Cape Town

June 02 2023

(Photo Credit: AP)

More than 20 nations, including Iran, Syria, and Venezuela, have expressed interest in joining the economic bloc

By News Desk

The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia took part in a ministerial meeting of the BRICS economic bloc in Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 June, for discussions that included the possible expansion of the group – which is currently made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met with his Russian and Indian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to discuss bilateral relations and the kingdom’s interest in joining the bloc.

More than 20 countries have “formally or informally” requested to join the BRICS bloc, according to South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, Anil Sooklal. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the UAE each have made official requests.

“Amid the west’s actions, our countries should actively seek universal joint responses to challenges,” Lavrov said during the summit, adding that this is about such challenges as “attempts to undermine the foundations of collective, equal and indivisible security, regional conflicts, international terrorism, and transnational crime.”

“I am confident that under current conditions, the role of BRICS in facilitating the resolution of global issues should only grow, especially since our alliance remains an example of genuine multilateralism,” Lavrov said.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, who hosted Thursday’s talks, confirmed that an invitation had been extended to Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend a larger BRICS summit scheduled for August.

Putin’s participation will come despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against him for “war crimes” committed in Ukraine. However, Pretoria has already granted diplomatic immunity to Russian officials attending, which its foreign affairs department described as standard procedure.

“BRICS has acquired a very important stature in the world, with many countries across various continents of our world seeking to be part of it,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told lawmakers in Cape Town on Wednesday.

The expansion of BRICS and their reported development of a new currency to counter the US dollar are being heralded by many in the Global South as a tectonic shift in international relations.

“We are following the trend of [developing] a multipolar world and democratizing international relations, adhering to genuine multilateralism, seeking to strengthen the voice and influence of the developing countries in world affairs, and promoting the reform and building a system of global governance,” Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ma Zhaoxu, said on Thursday.

Related

• US army admits HIMARS deployed to Syria, says missiles not in SDF control
• Blinken headed to Saudi Arabia in hopes of mending ties
• US continues to smuggle Syrian oil into Iraq
• Iran to become ‘full-fledged’ SCO member in July
• Israel’s Shin Bet director arrives in Washington for ‘private’ meetings

The U.S. Proxy War Against Russia & China Is Increasingly Seen Globally As A Disaster Made By American And NATO Lies

April 28, 2023

Source

The proxy war in Ukraine is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.

It has become patently obvious to the world that the conflict in Ukraine is a dirty and desperate geopolitical confrontation, despite massive Western media efforts to portray it as something else more noble – the usual charade of chivalry and virtue to disguise naked Western imperialism.

The death and destruction in Ukraine is nothing but a proxy war by the United States and its NATO partners to defeat Russia in a strategic gambit. But the unspoken objective does not end with Russia. The U.S. and its Western imperialist lackeys are driven to push for confrontation with China too.

As if taking on Russia is not reckless enough! The Western powers want to double down on their warmongering with China. This is all because the underlying impetus is for Washington and its Western minions to promote U.S.-led dominance of the global order. Russia and China are the main obstacles to that path of would-be dominance, and hence we see this manic drive for aggression stemming from Washington, the executive power of the Western order.

It should be obvious that while the U.S.-led NATO axis has stoked the war in Ukraine to calamitous heights, this same axis is wantonly inciting tensions with China. This observation alone should be enough to condemn the criminality of Western powers.

This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.

In a scathing speech to the United Nations Security Council this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be properly resolved without an understanding of the geopolitical context. In other words, the war in the former Soviet republic which erupted last February has bigger causes than what the Western powers and their compliant news media would try to pretend otherwise.

Defense of Ukraine? Defense of democracy? Defense of international law? Defense of national sovereignty? These are some of the laughable claims made by Washington and its allies. One only has to consider the decades of total trashing of the UN Charter and democratic principles by the United States and its rogue partners in their pursuit of criminal wars to realize that their virtue-signaling over Ukraine is a vile joke.

Lavrov’s address to the Security Council was a stunning rebuke of the hypocrisy and criminality of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers, as well as the European Union. His speech was akin to the scene in the classic old movie The Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled back on the buffoonish villain for all to see. Any objective observer would agree with the Russian foreign minister’s excoriating survey of modern history and why the war in Ukraine has tragically manifested. Lamentably, if we fail to understand history and the real causes of conflicts, then we are condemned to repeat the horrors.

Ironically, Western leaders have at times revealed the bigger geopolitical agenda with their own misspoken arrogant words. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously blurted out a call for regime change in Moscow while his senior aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, have succumbed to the intoxication of their narcissism and hubris by saying that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is the “defeat of Russia”.

Other NATO senior figures, such as the stupid, conceited Polish leaders and their Baltic buddies, have also come out and stated that the war’s ulterior agenda is to vanquish Russia. The fascist skeletons of their Nazi-collusion past have resurrected their deathly rattles, uncontrollably.

As Lavrov’s address to the Security Council intimates, the systematic violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western partners is a deplorable continuation of the Nazi fascism and imperialist barbarism that was supposed to have been defeated in World War Two. The culmination of the constant, unbridled Western imperialist criminality and its state terrorism is the current war in Ukraine and the growing aggression toward China over Taiwan as a pretext.

In all of this, woefully, the Western public has been flagrantly lied to by their governments and media as to the real nature of the war in Ukraine. American and European citizens have been bilked for hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev whose function is to act as a NATO spear-tip against Russia, and ultimately China when the NATO powers feel they are done with Ukraine. (The latter is a futile ambition, as is becoming increasingly evident.)

Journalists and antiwar activists in the West who highlight the malfeasance over Ukraine are either sacked, vilified, censored, or sanctioned into poverty, or even imprisoned.

Nevertheless, the Western public and the rest of the world are increasingly becoming aware of the odious charade. By definition, charades are inevitably untenable.

The Global South – the majority of the 193 nations at the UN – has had it with Western capitalist hegemony and its outrageous neocolonialist privileges. The incremental dumping of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency for trade is a testament to the historic shift towards a multipolar order in defiance of Western unipolar elitism. The nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia understand that the U.S.-led NATO war in Ukraine is a desperate last-ditch bid to preserve an imperialist global order which should have been eradicated after World War Two with the establishment of the United Nations, but which, regrettably, was not. Because the root cause of imperialism is the AngloAmerican-led Western capitalist order. The end of World War Two, as with World War One, was but a pause in the historical killing machine.

It is now increasingly evident in the light of leaked documents from the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine is a disaster. The Kiev regime is facing defeat at the hands of superior Russian forces even though that regime has been flooded with weapons by the United States and NATO. Great expectations of a Ukrainian victory that were widely predicted by Western leaders and media have been shown to be empty, contemptible lies.

The side-show of this war is a gargantuan racket. Western arms companies have raked in unprecedented profits, while the NATO-backed cabal in Kiev has skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the same Kiev regime that is burning down Orthodox Christian churches, exterminating the Russian language, lionizing World War Two Nazi criminals, and locking up any critical opposition and media.

But the main takeaway is the lies that the United States and Western lackeys, including the entire media industry, have been telling about the proxy war in Ukraine. This war is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.

We should not be surprised by such blatant lying and deception. President Joe Biden and his administration have been telling barefaced lies to conceal the corruption oozing out of Biden’s own family. Biden and his son Hunter have exploited Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 for personal enrichment. The president has even reportedly got his senior aides to do his bidding to censor intelligence agencies and media from revealing to the public the corruption at the heart of his family. (Risibly, the truth is smeared as Russian or Chinese disinformation!)

The lies that Biden and his administration tell about personal corruption are indelibly coupled with the lies told about the proxy war in Ukraine.

It is increasingly clear that the American public, the European public, and the rest of the world have been duped in multiple ways. The phony war in Ukraine is exposing the deep, stinking well of corruption in this White House. There will be hell to pay.

Putin-Xi Geopolitical Game-changing Summit at the Kremlin

April 03, 2023

Global Research,

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation.

By Pepe Escobar

Region: Russia and FSU

Theme: History

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

How sharp was good ol’ Lenin, prime modernist, when he mused, “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. This global nomad now addressing you has enjoyed the privilege of spending four astonishing weeks in Moscow at the heart of an historical crossroads – culminating with the Putin-Xi geopolitical game-changing summit at the Kremlin.

To quote Xi, “changes that haven’t been seen in 100 years” do have a knack of affecting us all in more ways than one.

James Joyce, another modernity icon, wrote that we spend our lives meeting average and/or extraordinary people, on and on and on, but in the end we’re always meeting ourselves. I have had the privilege of meeting an array of extraordinary people in Moscow, guided by trusted friends or by auspicious coincidence: in the end your soul tells you they enrich you and the overarching historical moment in ways you can’t even begin to fathom.

Here are some of them. The grandson of Boris Pasternak, a gifted young man who teaches Ancient Greek at Moscow State University. A historian with unmatched knowledge of Russian history and culture. The Tajik working class huddling together in a chaikhana with the proper ambience of Dushanbe.

Chechens and Tuvans in awe doing the loop in the Big Central Line. A lovely messenger sent by friends extremely careful about security matters to discuss issues of common interest. Exceptionally accomplished musicians performing underground in Mayakovskaya. A stunning Siberian princess vibrant with unbounded energy, taking that motto previously applied to the energy industry – Power of Siberia – to a whole new level.

A dear friend took me to Sunday service at the Devyati Muchenikov Kizicheskikh church, the favorite of Peter the Great: the quintessential purity of Eastern Orthodoxy. Afterwards the priests invited us for lunch in their communal table, displaying not only their natural wisdom but also an uproarious sense of humor.

At a classic Russian apartment crammed with 10,000 books and with a view to the Ministry of Defense – plenty of jokes included – Father Michael, in charge if Orthodox Christianity relations with the Kremlin, sang the Russian imperial anthem after an indelible night of religious and cultural discussions.

I had the honor to meet some of those who were particularly targeted by the imperial machine of lies. Maria Butina – vilified by the proverbial “spy who came in from the cold” shtick – now a deputy at the Duma. Viktor Bout – which pop culture metastasized into the “Lord of War”, complete with Nic Cage movie: I was speechless when he told me he was reading me in maximum security prison in the USA, via pen drives sent by his friends (he had no internet access). The indefatigable, iron-willed Mira Terada – tortured when she was in a U.S. prison, now heading a foundation protecting children caught in hard times.

I spent much treasured quality time and engaged in invaluable discussions with Alexander Dugin – the crucial Russian of these post-everything times, a man of pure inner beauty, exposed to unimaginable suffering after the terrorist assassination of Darya Dugina, and still able to muster a depth and reach when it comes to drawing connections across the philosophy, history and history of civilizations spectrum that is virtually unmatched in the West.

Zelensky’s Proposal to Ban Russians From Visiting the West

On the offensive against Russophobia

And then there were the diplomatic, academic and business meetings. From the head of international investor relations of Norilsk Nickel to Rosneft executives, not to mention the EAEU’s Sergey Glazyev himself, side by side with his top economic adviser Dmitry Mityaev, I was given a crash course on the current A to Z of Russian economy – including serious problems to be addressed.

At the Valdai Club, what really mattered were the meetings on the sidelines, much more than the actual panels: that’s when Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Syrians, Kurds, Palestinians, Chinese tell you what is really in their hearts and minds.

The official launch of the International Movement of Russophiles was a special highlight of these four weeks. A special message written by President Putin was read by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who then delivered his own speech. Later, at the House of Receptions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, four of us were received by Lavrov at a private audience. Future cultural projects were discussed. Lavrov was extremely relaxed, displaying his matchless sense of humor.

This is a cultural as much as a political movement, designed to fight Russophobia and to tell the Russian story, in all its immensely rich aspects, especially to the Global South.

I am a founding member and my name is on the charter. In my nearly four decades as a foreign correspondent, I have never been part of any political/cultural movement anywhere in the world; nomad independents are a fierce breed. But this is extremely serious: the current, irredeemably mediocre self-described “elites” of the collective West want no less than cancel Russia all across the spectrum. No pasarán.

Spirituality, compassion, mercy

Decades happening in only four weeks imply precious time needed to put it all in perspective.

The initial gut feeling the day I arrived, after a seven-hour walk under snow flurries, was confirmed: this is the capital of the multipolar world. I saw it among the West Asians at the Valdai. I saw it talking to visiting Iranians, Turks and Chinese. I saw it when over 40 African delegations took over the whole area around the Duma – the day Xi arrived in town. I saw it throughout the reception across the Global South to what Xi and Putin are proposing to the overwhelming majority of the planet.

In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success. Supermarkets have everything – and more – compared to the West. There’s an abundance of first-rate restaurants. You can buy a Bentley or a Loro Pianna cashmere coat you can’t even find in Italy. We laughed about it chatting with managers at the TSUM department store. At the BiblioGlobus bookstore, one of them told me, “We are the Resistance.”

By the way, I had the honor to deliver a talk on the war in Ukraine at the coolest bookshop in town, Bunker, mediated by my dear friend, immensely knowledgeable Dima Babich. A huge responsibility. Especially because Vladimir L. was in the audience. He’s Ukrainian, and spent 8 years, up to 2022, telling it like it really was to Russian radio, until he managed to leave – after being held at gunpoint – using an internal Ukrainian passport. Later we went to a Czech beer hall where he detailed his extraordinary story.

In Moscow, their toxic ghosts are always lurking in the background. Yet one cannot but feel sorry for the psycho Straussian neocons and neoliberal-cons who now barely qualify as Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s puny orphans.

In the late 1990s, Brzezinski pontificated that, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical center because its very existence as an independent state helps transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

With or without a demilitarized and denazified Ukraine, Russia has already changed the narrative. This is not about becoming a Eurasian empire again. This is about leading the long, complex process of Eurasia integration – already in effect – in parallel to supporting true, sovereign independence across the Global South.

I left Moscow – the Third Rome – towards Constantinople – the Second Rome – one day before Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev gave a devastating interview to Rossiyskaya Gazeta once again outlining all the essentialities inherent to the NATO vs. Russia war.

This is what particularly struck me: “Our centuries-old culture is based on spirituality, compassion and mercy. Russia is a historical defender of sovereignty and statehood of any peoples who turned to it for help. She saved the U.S. itself at least twice, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. But I believe that this time it is impractical to help the United States maintain its integrity.”

In my last night, before hitting a Georgian restaurant, I was guided by the perfect companion off Pyatnitskaya to a promenade along the Moscow River, beautiful rococo buildings gloriously lighted, the scent of Spring – finally – in the air. It’s one of those “Wild Strawberry” moments out of Bergman’s masterpiece that hits the bottom of our soul. Like mastering the Tao in practice. Or the perfect meditative insight at the top of the Himalayas, the Pamirs or the Hindu Kush.

So the conclusion is inevitable. I’ll be back. Soon.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Initially published by Strategic Culture Foundation

Featured image is licensed under the Public Domain

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2023

---

Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page

Become a Member of Global Research

Pepe Escobar – Archive

• Putin-Xi Geopolitical Game-changing Summit at the KremlinBy Pepe Escobar, April 03, 2023
• In Moscow, Xi and Putin Bury Pax AmericanaBy Pepe Escobar, March 23, 2023
• Moveable Multipolarity in Moscow: Ridin’ the ‘Newcoin’ TrainBy S. Tzu and Pepe Escobar, March 14, 2023
• President Raisi in Beijing: Iran-China Strategic Plans Go Full ThrottleBy Pepe Escobar, February 20, 2023
• Nord Stream Terror Attack: The Plot ThickensBy Pepe Escobar, February 16, 2023
• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono?By Pepe Escobar, February 13, 2023
• A Panicked Empire Tries to Make Russia an “Offer It Can’t Refuse”By Pepe Escobar, February 01, 2023
• ‘Doomsday Clock’: 90 Seconds to MidnightBy Pepe Escobar, January 27, 2023
• Can You Smell What the Year of the Rabbit Is Cooking?By Pepe Escobar, January 25, 2023
• Global South: Gold-backed Currencies to Replace the US DollarBy Pepe Escobar, January 20, 2023
• ‘Fragmented World’ Sleepwalks Into World War IIIBy Pepe Escobar, January 18, 2023
• All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front. The Davos Freak Show.By Pepe Escobar, January 17, 2023
• Why China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Is Back with a BangBy Pepe Escobar, January 09, 2023
• Will Confucius Marry Marx? The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese PoliticsBy Pepe Escobar, January 05, 2023
• Xi of Arabia and the Petroyuan DriveBy Pepe Escobar, December 18, 2022
• Bypassing U.S. Dollar Hegemony: The Global South Births a New Game-changing Payment SystemBy Pepe Escobar, December 05, 2022
• “Operation Claw-Sword”: Erdogan’s Big New Game in SyriaBy Pepe Escobar, November 28, 2022
• Russia, India, China, Iran: The Quad that Really MattersBy Pepe Escobar, November 16, 2022
• The Kherson Retreat. Massive Weaponization Coupled with “NATO de facto Running the War”By Pepe Escobar, November 14, 2022
• Bamboo Diplomacy: The China-Southeast Asia RomanceBy Pepe Escobar, November 11, 2022
• Berlin Goes to Beijing: The Real DealBy Pepe Escobar, November 06, 2022
• No Pain, No Grain: Putin’s Black Sea ComebackBy Pepe Escobar, November 06, 2022
• Putin: ‘The Situation Is, to a Certain Extent, Revolutionary’By Pepe Escobar, October 31, 2022
• Eight Months into Putin’s war. A New Era. For Ukraine, The European Union, and the WorldBy Michael Welch, Douglas Macgregor, and Pepe Escobar, October 30, 2022
• Everybody Wants to Hop on the BRICS Express, “Bypassing the US Dollar”By Pepe Escobar, October 28, 2022
• The ‘War of Terror’ May be About to Hit EuropeBy Pepe Escobar, October 25, 2022
• ‘Peaceful Modernization’: China’s Offering to the Global SouthBy Pepe Escobar, October 21, 2022
• China: Xi Gets Ready for the Final CountdownBy Pepe Escobar, October 19, 2022
• Russia’s Strategic Eurasian Partners: SCO+, BRICS+, Astana CICA Summit. OPEC+ Decision to “Stabilize Global Energy Markets”By Pepe Escobar, October 14, 2022
• The Thin Red Line: NATO Can’t Afford to Lose Kabul and KievBy Pepe Escobar, October 13, 2022
• Terror on Crimea Bridge Incites Russia to Unleash “Shock and Awe”?By Pepe Escobar, October 11, 2022
• “Pipeline Terror”: Nord Stream 2 Offers Germany a Date with DestinyBy Pepe Escobar, October 07, 2022
• Michael Hudson: A Roadmap to Escape the West’s StrangleholdBy Prof Michael Hudson and Pepe Escobar, October 07, 2022
• Pipeline Terror Is the 9/11 of the Raging TwentiesBy Pepe Escobar, October 05, 2022
• Who Profits from Pipeline Terror? “A NATO on NATO Attack”By Pepe Escobar, September 30, 2022
• Germany and EU Have Been Handed Over a Declaration of WarBy Pepe Escobar, September 29, 2022
• The Real US Agenda in Africa Is HegemonyBy Pepe Escobar, September 22, 2022
• Asia’s Future Takes Shape in Vladivostok, the Russian PacificBy Pepe Escobar, September 16, 2022
• The Kharkov Game-ChangerBy Pepe Escobar, September 15, 2022
• Germany’s Energy Suicide: An AutopsyBy Pepe Escobar, September 13, 2022
• Ukraine: Somewhere Between Afghanization and SyrianizationBy Pepe Escobar, September 02, 2022Six Months Into Ukraine’s Collapse, the World Has Changed ForeverBy Pepe Escobar, August 30, 2022
• Count-Down to Apocalypse: Are the US and Russia Finally on Course toward World War III?By Michael Welch, Pepe Escobar, Glenn Michalchuk, and John Helmer, August 15, 2022
• How a Missile in Kabul Connects to a Speaker in Taipei: Al Qaeda’s Al Zawahiri Versus Nancy PelosiBy Pepe Escobar, August 04, 2022
• History: Discover Persian Poet Jalal al-Din Rumi’s “Spiritual Geopolitics”By Pepe Escobar, August 02, 2022
• For Those About to Rock. The Non-Aligned Movement. The NAM 2.0 Drive. Pepe EscobarBy Pepe Escobar, July 24, 2022
• The Multipolar “Iran-Russia-Turkey Troika” Overshadows “Unipolar Joe Biden” in West Asia. Pepe EscobarBy Pepe Escobar, July 21, 2022
• In Eurasia, the War of Economic Corridors Is in Full SwingBy Pepe Escobar, July 17, 2022
• Russia and China Haven’t Even Started to Ratchet Up the Pain Dial. Pepe EscobarBy Pepe Escobar, July 14, 2022
• The Empire Is Not Done Torturing AfghanistanBy Pepe Escobar, July 08, 2022
• BRICS+ and the Global South: Emerging Leaders of a Multipolar World? Pepe EscobarBy Pepe Escobar, July 02, 2022
• Behind the “Tin Curtain”: BRICS+ vs. NATO/G7By Pepe Escobar, June 29, 2022
• St. Petersburg 2022 Forum Sets the Stage for the “War of Economic Corridors”By Pepe Escobar, June 20, 2022
• Will the Global South Break Free from Dollarized Debt?By Pepe Escobar, June 10, 2022
• Bilderberg Meets in Washington: Bilderberg Does China. An Economic Hurricane is ComingBy Pepe Escobar, June 07, 2022
• The Eurasian Economic Union Steps UpBy Pepe Escobar, May 29, 2022
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Where Is the West’s Ukraine Strategy? “Clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘Experts’”By Pepe Escobar, May 17, 2022
• Terror from Balochistan: A Menacing Tool to Disrupt China-Pakistan Economic Relations?By Pepe Escobar, May 06, 2022
• Clash of Christianities: Why Europe Cannot Understand RussiaBy Pepe Escobar, May 02, 2022

End US, West world hegemony: Russia’s new foreign policy doctrine

March 31, 2023

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

The new foreign strategy says Russia is responsible for defending cultural and spiritual values against “pseudo-humanistic” and other “neoliberal ideologies”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia in February 2022. (Reuters)

Russia adopted a new foreign policy doctrine on Friday that prioritizes reforming world politics away from the hegemony of the United States and its Western allies and supporting countries that choose to fight neocolonialists and foreign interference.

The new foreign strategy went into effect after being signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Russian Federation intends to give priority to the elimination of vestiges of the dominance of the United States and other unfriendly countries in world politics,” the document said.

Russia would aim to “create the conditions for any state to reject neo-colonialist and hegemonic aims,” the 42-page policy read.

“Radical changes” in the world prompted the new policies, Putin said during a security council meeting, stressing that Russia’s engagement in the international arena must reflect its view on these changes.

Defender against neo-liberal ideologies

Russia views China and India as key allies in its new foreign doctrine and stresses the strategic importance of deepening relations and “coordination with friendly sovereign global centers of power and development located on the Eurasian continent.”

The war in Ukraine led to severe sanctions by the US and EU who lobbied countries around the world to join in on the unilateral sanctions, but many countries, including China and India, increased economic and bilateral relations with Moscow, reaching historic levels.

Read more: Russia-India trade to break record in 2022

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a three-day official trip to Moscow earlier this month where he met with Putin and held what was described by the media as historic talks. The two presidents signed during Xi’s trip two joint strategic documents aiming to boost the two global powers’ economic and diplomatic partnership. 

Russia, as per the document, is a “state civilization” and is responsible for protecting the “Russian world” – in reference to cultures that align with that of the country within Eurasia. Russia will be tasked with protecting “traditional spiritual and moral values” against “pseudo-humanistic and other neo-liberal ideological attitudes.”

Read more: China, Russia top world’s trade surplus leaders in 2022

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the new foreign policy doctrine identified “the existential nature of threats to the security and development of our country, driven by the actions of unfriendly states.”

“The United States of America is directly named as the main instigator and driver of anti-Russian sentiment,” he added.

“The West’s policy of trying to weaken Russia in every possible way is characterized as a hybrid war of a new type.”

Read more: Russia-Iran trade hits record high: Russian envoy to Iran

The Stage Is Set for Hybrid World War III

February 28, 2023

The strategists of Russia and China are now working full time on how to return all strands of Hybrid War against the Hegemon.

Pepe Escobar

A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you’re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by selected stops and enlightening conversations, crystallizing disparate vectors one year after the start of the accelerated phase of the proxy war between U.S./NATO and Russia.

That’s how Moscow welcomes you: the undisputed capital of the 21st century multipolar world.

A long, walking meditation impregnates on us how President Putin’s address – rather, a civilizational speech – last week was a game-changer when it comes to the demarcation of the civilizational red lines we are all now facing. It acted like a powerful drill perforating the less than short, actually zero term memory of the Collective West. No wonder it exercised a somewhat sobering effect contrasting the non-stop Russophobia binge of the NATOstan space.

Alexey Dobrinin, Director of the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Russia, has correctly described Putin’s address as “a methodological basis for understanding, describing and constructing multipolarity.”

For years some of us have been showing how the emerging multipolar world is defined – but goes way beyond – high speed interconnectivity, physical and geoeconomic. Now, as we reach the next stage, it’s as if Putin and Xi Jinping, each in their own way, are conceptualizing the two key civilizational vectors of multipolarity. That’s the deeper meaning of the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership, invisible to the naked eye.

Metaphorically, it also speaks volumes that Russia’s pivot to the East, towards the rising sun, now irreversible, was the only logical path to follow as, to quote Dylan, darkness dawns at the break of noon across the West.

As it stands, with the wobblin’, ragin’ Hegemon lost in its own pre-fabricated daze, the real runners of the show feeding burning flesh to irredeemably mediocre political “elites”, China may have a little more latitude than Russia, as the Middle Kingdom is not – yet – under the same existential pressure Russia has been put under.

Whatever happens next geopolitically, Russia is at heart a – giant – obstacle on the warmongering path of the Hegemon: the ultimate target is top “threat” China.

Putin’s ability to size up our extremely delicate geopolitical moment – via a dose of highly concentrated, undiluted realism – is something to behold. And then Foreign Minister Lavrov provided the sweet cherry on top, calling the hapless U.S. ambassador for a hardcore dress down: oh yeah, this is war, hybrid and otherwise, and your NATO mercenaries as well as your junk hardware are legitimate targets.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, now more than ever relishing his “unplugged” status, made it all very clear: “Russia risks being torn apart if it stops a special military operation (SMO) before victory is achieved.”

And the message is even more acute because it represents the – public – cue to the Chinese leadership at the Zhongnahhai to understand: whatever happens next, this is the Kremlin’s unmovable official position.

The Chinese restore the Mandate of Heaven

All these vectors are evolving as ramifications of the bombing of the Nord Streams, the only military attack – cum industrial terrorism – ever perpetrated against the EU, leave the Collective West paralyzed, dazed and confused.

Perfectly in tandem with Putin’s address, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose the geopolitical/existential moment to finally take the gloves off, with a flourish: enter the

U.S. Hegemony and its Perils essay cum report, which became an instant massive hit across Chinese media, examined with relish all across East Asia.

This blistering enumeration of all the Hegemon’s lethal follies, for decades, constitutes a point of no return for trademark Chinese diplomacy, so far characterized by passivity, ambivalence, actual restraint and extreme politeness. So such turnaround is yet another proud “achievement” of the outright Sinophobia and mendacious hostility exhibited by American neocons and neoliberal-cons.

Scholar Quan Le notes that this document may be regarded as the traditional form – but now filled with contemporary wording – the Chinese Sovereigns used in their millenary past before going to war.

It is in fact an axio-epistemo-political proclamation justifying a serious war, which in the Chinese universe means a war ordained by a Higher Power capable of restoring Justice & Harmony in a troubled Universe.

After the proclamation the warriors are equipped to strike mercilessly at the entity judged to be troubling the Harmony of the Universe: in our case, the psycho Straussian neo-cons and neoliberal-cons commanded as rabid dogs by the real American elites.

Of course in the Chinese universe there’s no place for “God” – much less a Christian version; “God” for the Chinese means the Beauty-Goodness-Truth trinity, Timeless Heavenly Universal Principles. The closest concept for a non-Chinese to understand is Dao: the Way. So the Way to the Beauty-Goodness-Truth trinity represents symbolically Beauty-Goodness-Truth.

So what Beijing did – and the Collective West is completely clueless about it – was to issue an axio-epistemo-political proclamation explaining the legitimacy of their quest to restore Timeless Heavenly Universal Principles. They will be fulfilling the Mandate of Heaven – nothing less. The West won’t know what it hit them until it’s too late.

It was predictable that sooner or later the heirs of Chinese civilization would have had enough – and formally identify, mirroring Putin’s analysis, the upstart Hegemon as the premier source of chaos, inequality and war across the planet. Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, in a nutshell.

To put it bluntly, in streetwise language, the hell with this Americana crap of hegemony being justified by “manifest destiny”.

So here we are. You want Hybrid War? We will return the favor.

Back to the Wolfowitz Doctrine

A former CIA advisor has issued a quite sobering report on a pebble along the rocky way: a possible endgame in Ukraine, now that even some elite-run parrots are contemplating a “way out” with minimal loss of face.

It’s never idle to remember that way back in 2000, the year Vladimir Putin was first elected as President, in the pre-9/11 world, rabid neocon Paul Wolfowitz was side by side with Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski in a huge Ukraine-U.S. symposium in Washington, where he unabashedly raved about provoking Russia to go to war with Ukraine, and committed to finance the destruction of Russia.

Everyone remembers the Wolfowitz doctrine – which was essentially a tawdry, pedestrian rehash of Brzezinski: to keep permanent U.S. hegemony it was primordial to pre-empt the emergence of any potential competitor.

Now we have two nuclear-powered, tech savvy peer competitors united by a comprehensive strategic partnership.

As I finished my long walk paying due respect by the Kremlin to the heroes of 1941-1945, the feeling was inescapable that as much as Russia is a master of riddles and China is a master of paradox, their strategists are now working full time on how to return all strands of Hybrid War against the Hegemon. One thing is certain: unlike boastful Americans, they won’t outline any breakthroughs until they are already in effect.

Also by this author

• Nord Stream Terror Attack: The Plot Thickens
• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono?
• Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West
• Can You Smell What the Year of the Rabbit Is Cooking?
• All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front

Putin’s ‘civilizational’ speech frames conflict between east and west

February 22 2023

Photo credit: The Cradle

In his Federal Assembly address, President Putin emphasized that Russia is not only an independent nation-state but also a distinct civilization with its own identity, which is in conflict and actively opposes the values of ‘western civilization.’

By Pepe Escobar

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty.

The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what happened a year ago also marked the birth of the real, 21^st century multipolar world

Then two days later, Moscow launched the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine to defend said republics.

Cool, calm, collected, without a hint of aggression, Putin’s speech painted Russia as an ancient, independent, and quite distinct civilization – sometimes following a path in concert with other civilizations, sometimes in divergence.

Ukraine, part of Russian civilization, now happens to be occupied by western civilization, which Putin said “became hostile to us,” like in a few instances in the past. So the acute phase of what is essentially a war by proxy of the west against Russia takes place over the body of Russian civilization.

That explains Putin’s clarification that “Russia is an open country, but an independent civilization – we do not consider ourselves superior but we inherited our civilization from our ancestors and we must pass it on.”

A war dilacerating the body of Russian civilization is a serious existential business. Putin also made clear that “Ukraine is being used as a tool and testing ground by the west against Russia.” Thus the inevitable follow-up: “The more long-range weapons are sent to Ukraine, the longer we have to push the threat away from our borders.”

Translation: this war will be long – and painful. There will be no swift victory with minimal loss of blood. The next moves around the Dnieper may take years to solidify. Depending on whether US policy continues to cleave to neo-con and neoliberal objectives, the frontline may be displaced to Lviv. Then German politics may change. Normal trade with France and Germany may be recovered only by the end of the next decade.

Kremlin exasperation: START is finished

All that brings us to the games played by the Empire of Lies. Says Putin: “The promises…of western rulers turned into forgery and cruel lies. The west supplied weapons, trained nationalist battalions. Even before the start of the SMO, there were negotiations…on the supply of air defense systems… We remember Kyiv’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Putin made it clear, once again, that the element of trust between Russia and the west, especially the US, is gone. So it’s a natural decision for Russia to “withdraw from the treaty on strategic offensive weapons, but we don’t do it officially. For now we are only halting our participation to the START treaty. No US inspections in our nuclear sites can be allowed.”

As an aside, of the three main US-Russian weapons treaties, Washington abandoned two of these: The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was dumped by the administration of former president George W. Bush in 2002, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was nixed by former president Donald Trump in 2019.

This shows the Kremlin’s degree of exasperation. Putin is even prepared to order the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom to get ready to test Russian nuclear weapons if the US goes first along the same road.

If that’s the case, Russia will be forced to completely break parity in the nuclear sphere, and abandon the moratorium on nuclear testing and cooperation with other nations when it comes to the production of nuclear weapons. So far, the US and NATO game consisted in opening a little window allowing them to inspect Russian nuclear sites.

With his judo move, Putin returns the pressure onto the White House.

The US and NATO will not be exactly thrilled when Russia starts testing its new strategic weapons, especially the post-doomsday Poseidon – the largest nuclear-powered torpedo ever deployed, capable of triggering terrifying radioactive ocean swells.

On the economic front: Bypassing the US dollar is the essential play towards multipolarity. During his speech, Putin made a point to extol the resilience of the Russian economy: “Russian GDP in 2022 decreased only by 2.1 percent, estimates of the opposing side did not become reality, they said 15, 20 percent.” That resilience gives Russia enough room to “work with partners to make the system of international settlements independent of the US dollar and other western currencies. The dollar will lose its universal role.”

On geoeconomics: Putin went all out in praise of economic corridors, from West Asia to South Asia: “New corridors, transport routes will be built towards the East, this is the region where we will focus our development, new highways to Kazakhstan and China, new North-South corridor to Pakistan, Iran.”

And those will connect to Russia developing “the ports of the Black and Azov Seas, it’s necessary to build logistics corridors within the country.” The result will be a progressive interconnection with the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) whose principals include Iran and India, and eventually China’s mega-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China’s plan for global security  

It’s inevitable that apart from sketching several state policies geared towards Russia’s internal development – one might even compare them to socialist policies – a great deal of Putin’s address had to focus on the NATO vs. Russia war till-the-last-Ukrainian.

Putin remarked on how “our relations with the west have degraded, and this is entirely the fault of the United States;” how NATO’s goal is to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia; and how the warmongering frenzy had forced him, a week ago, to sign a decree “putting new ground-based strategic complexes on combat duty.”

So it’s no accident that the US ambassador was immediately summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs right after Putin’s address.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Ambassador Lynne Tracey in no uncertain terms that Washington must take concrete measures: among them, to remove all US and NATO military forces and equipment away from Ukraine. In a stunning move, he demanded a detailed explanation of the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, as well as a halt to US interference in an independent inquiry to identify the responsible parties.

Keeping the momentum in Moscow, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi met with secretary of Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, before talking to Lavrov and Putin. Patrushev remarked, “the course towards developing a strategic partnership with China is an absolute priority for Russia’s foreign policy.” Wang Yi, not so cryptically, added, “Moscow and Beijing need to synchronize their watches.”

The Americans are doing everything to try and pre-empt the Chinese proposal for a de-escalation in Ukraine. China’s plan should be presented this Friday, and there’s a serious risk Beijing may fall into a trap set by the western plutocracy.

Too many Chinese “concessions” to Russia, and not as many to Ukraine, may be spun to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing (Divide and Rule, which is always the US Plan A. There’s no Plan B).

Sensing the waters, the Chinese themselves decided to take the offensive, presenting a Global Security Initiative Concept Paper.

The problem is Beijing still attributes too much clout to a toothless UN, when they refer to“formulating a New Agenda for Peace and other proposals put forth in Our Common Agenda by the UN Secretary-General.”

Same when Beijing upholds the consensus that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Try to explain that to the Straussian neo-con psychos in the Beltway, who know nothing about war, much less nuclear ones.

The Chinese affirm the necessity to “comply with the joint statement on preventing nuclear war and avoiding arms races issued by leaders of the five nuclear-weapon states in January 2022.” And to “strengthen dialogue and cooperation among nuclear-weapon states to reduce the risk of nuclear war.”

Bets can be made that Patrushev explained in detail to Wang Yi how that is just wishful thinking. The “logic “of the current collective western “leadership” has been expressed, among others, by irredeemable mediocrity Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general: even nuclear war is preferable to a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Putin’s measured but firm address has made it clear that the stakes keep getting higher. And it all revolves on how deep Russia’s – and China’s – “strategic ambiguity” are able to petrify a paranoid west flirting with mushroom clouds.

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

The Other Russia-West War: Why Some African Countries are Abandoning Paris, Joining Moscow

February 14, 2023

An anti-France protest in Burkina Faso. (Photo: video grab)

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

By Ramzy Baroud

The moment that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted by his own former military colleague, Captain Ibrahim Traore, pro-coup crowds filled the streets. Some burned French flags, others carried Russian flags. This scene alone represents the current tussle underway throughout the African continent.

A few years ago, the discussion regarding the geopolitical shifts in Africa was not exactly concerned with France and Russia per se. It focused mostly on China’s growing economic role and political partnerships on the African continent. For example, Beijing’s decision to establish its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2017 signaled China’s major geopolitical move, by translating its economic influence in the region to political influence, backed by military presence.

China remains committed to its Africa strategy. Beijing has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 12 years, consecutively, with total bilateral trade between China and Africa, in 2021, reaching $254.3 billion, according to recent data released by the General Administration of Customs of China.

The United States, along with its western allies, have been aware of, and warning against China’s growing clout in Africa. The establishment of US AFRICOM in 2007 was rightly understood to be a countering measure to China’s influence. Since then, and arguably before, talks of a new ‘Scramble for Africa’ abounded, with new players, including China, Russia, even Turkiye, entering the fray.

The Russia-Ukraine war, however, has altered geopolitical dynamics in Africa, as it highlighted the Russian-French rivalry on the continent, as opposed to the Chinese-American competition there.

Though Russia has been present in African politics for years, the war – thus the need for stable allies at the United Nations and elsewhere – accelerated Moscow’s charm offensive. In July, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, fortifying Russia’s diplomatic relations with African leaders.

“We know that the African colleagues do not approve of the undisguised attempts of the US and their European satellites .. to impose a unipolar world order to the international community,” Lavrov said. His words were met with agreement.

Russian efforts have been paying dividends, as early as the first votes to condemn Moscow at the United Nations General Assembly, in March and April. Many African nations remained either neutral or voted against measures targeting Russia at the UN.

South Africa’s position, in particular, was problematic from Washington’s perspective, not only because of the size of the country’s economy, but also because of Pretoria’s political influence and moral authority throughout Africa. Moreover, South Africa is the only African member of the G20.

In his visit to the US in September, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa defended his country’s neutrality and raised objections to a draft US bill – the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act – that is set to monitor and punish African governments who do not conform to the American line in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The West fails to understand, however, that Africa’s slow, but determined shift toward Moscow is not haphazard or accidental.

The history of the continent’s past and current struggle against western colonialism and neocolonialism is well-known. While the West continues to define its relationship with Africa based on exploitation, Russia is constantly reminding African countries of the Soviet’s legacy on the continent. This is not only apparent in official political discourses by Russian leaders and diplomats, but also in Russian media coverage, which is prioritizing Africa and reminding African nations of their historic solidarity with Moscow.

Burning French flags and raising Russian ones, however, cannot simply be blamed on Russian supposed economic bribes, clever diplomacy or growing military influence. The readiness of African nations – Mali, Central African Republic and, now, possibly, Burkina Faso – has much more to do with mistrust and resentment of France’s self-serving legacy in Africa, West Africa in particular.

France has military bases in many parts of Africa and remains an active participant in various military conflicts, which has earned it the reputation of being the continent’s main destabilizing force. Equally important is Paris’s stronghold over the economies of 14 African countries, which are forced to use French currency, the CFA franc and, according to Frederic Ange Toure, writing in Le Journal de l’Afrique, to “centralize 50% of their reserves in the French public treasury”.

Though many African countries remain neutral in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, a massive geopolitical shift is underway, especially in militarily fragile, impoverished and politically unstable countries that are eager to seek alternatives to French and other western powers. For a country like Mali, shifting allegiances from Paris to Moscow was not exactly a great gamble. Bamako had very little to lose, but much to gain. The same logic applies to other African countries that are fighting extreme poverty, political instability and the threat of militancy, all of which are intrinsically linked.

Though China remains a powerful newcomer to Africa – a reality that continues to frustrate US policymakers – the more urgent battle, for now, is between Russia and France – the latter experiencing a palpable retreat.

In a speech last July, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted a “rethink of all our (military) postures on the African continent.” France’s military and foreign policy shift in Africa, however, was not compelled by strategy or vision, but by changing realities over which France has little control.

The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono?

February 11, 2023

by Pepe Escobar, widely distributed on the Internet, posted with the author’s permission

When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism.

Everyone with a brain already knew the Empire did it. Now Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report  not only details how Nord Stream 1 and 2 were attacked, but also names names: from the toxic Straussian neoliberal-con trio Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland all the way to the Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief.

Arguably the most incandescent nugget in Hersh’s narrative is to point ultimate responsibility directly at the White House. The CIA, for its part, gets away with it. The whole report may be read as the framing of a scapegoat. A very fragile, shoddy scapegoat – what with those classified documents in the garage, the endless stares into the void, the cornucopia of incomprehensible mumbling, and of course the whole, ghastly, years-long family corruption carousel in and around Ukraine, still to be completely unveiled.

Hersh’s report happened to pop up immediately after the deadly earthquakes in Turkey/Syria. This is an investigative journalism earthquake in itself, straddling over fault lines and revealing countless open air fissures, nuggets of truth gasping for air amidst the rubble.

But is that all there is? Does the narrative hold from start to finish? Yes and no. First of all, why now? This is a leak – essentially from one Deep State insider, Hersh’s key source. This 21^st century “Deep Throat” remix may be appalled at the toxicity of the system, but at the same time he knows that whatever he says, there will be no consequences.

Cowardly Berlin – ignoring the nuts and bolts of the scheme all along – will not even squeak. After all the Green gang has been ecstatic, because the terror attack has thoroughly advanced their medieval de-industrialization agenda. In parallel, as an extra bonus, all the other European vassals receive further confirmation this is the fate that awaits them if they don’t follow His Master’s Voice.

Hersh’s narrative frames the Norwegians as the essential accessory to terror. Hardly surprising: NATO’s Jens “Peace is War” Stoltenberg has been a CIA asset for perhaps half a century. And Oslo of course had its own motives to be part of the deal; to collect loads of extra cash selling whatever spare energy it had for desperate European customers.

A little narrative problem is that Norway, unlike the U.S. Navy, still does not have any operational P-8 Poseidon. What was clear at the time is that an American P-8 was commuting back and forth – with mid-air refueling – from the U.S. to Bornholm island.

A positive screamer is that Hersh – rather, his key source – had the MI6 completely vanish from the narrative. SVR, Russian intel, had focused like a laser on MI6 at the time, as well as the Poles. What still cements the narrative is that the combo behind “Biden” provided the planning, the intel and coordinated the logistics, while the final act – in this case a sonar buoy detonating the C4 explosives – may have been perpetrated by the Norwegian vassals.

The problem is the buoy may have been dropped by an American P-8. And there’s no explanation of why one of the sections of Nord Stream 2 escaped intact.

Hersh’s modus operandi is legendary. From the perspective of a foreign correspondent on the ground since the mid-1990s, from the U.S. and NATOstan to all corners of Eurasia, it’s easy for someone like me to understand how he uses anonymous sources and how he accesses – and protects – his extensive list of contacts: trust works both ways. His track record is absolutely unrivalled.

But of course the possibility remains: what if he is being played? Is this no more than a limited hangout? After all, the narrative oscillates wildly between minute detail and quite a few dead ends, constantly featuring a huge paper trail and too many people in the loop – which implies exaggerated risk. The CIA hesitating too much to go for the kill is a certified red alert throughout the narrative – especially when we know that the ideal underwater actors for such an op would have come from the CIA Special Activities Division, and not the U.S. Navy.

What will Russia do?

Arguably the whole planet is thinking what will be the Russian response.

Surveying the chessboard, what the Kremlin and the Security Council see is Merkel confessing Minsk 2 was merely a ruse; the imperial attack on the Nord Streams (they got the picture, but might not have all the insider details provided by Hersh’s source); former Israeli PM Bennett on the record detailing how the Anglo-Americans killed the Ukraine peace process which was on track in Istanbul last year.

So it’s no wonder that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made it clear that when it comes to nuclear negotiations with the Americans, any proposed gestures of goodwill are “unjustified, untimely and uncalled for.”

The Ministry, on purpose, and somewhat ominously, was very vague on a key issue: “strategic nuclear forces objects” that have been attacked by Kiev – helped by the Americans. These attacks may have involved “military-technical and information-intelligence” aspects.

When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism: the ritual burial – at the bottom of the Baltic Sea – of international law, and even the Empire’s tawdry ersatz, the “rules-based international order”.

It will take some time to fully identify which Deep State faction may have used Hersh to promote its agenda. Of course he’s aware of it – but that would never have been enough to keep him away from researching a bombshell (three months of hard work). The U.S. mainstream media will do everything to suppress, censor, demean and ignore his report; but what matters is that across the Global South it is already spreading like wildfire.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Lavrov has gone totally unplugged, much like Medvedev, denouncing how the U.S. has “unleashed a total hybrid war” against Russia, with both nuclear powers now on a path of direct confrontation. And as Washington has declared the “strategic defeat” of Russia as its goal and turned bilateral relations into a ball of fire, there can be no “business as usual” anymore.

The Russian “response” – even before Hersh’s report – has been on another level entirely; advanced de-dollarization across the spectrum, from the EAEU to BRICS and beyond; and total reorientation of trade towards Eurasia and other parts of the Global South. Russia is establishing firm conditions for further stability, already foreseeing the inevitable: the time to frontally deal with NATO.

As kinetic responses go, facts on the battleground show Russia further crushing the American/NATO proxy army in full Strategic Ambiguity mode. The terror attack on the Nord Streams of course will always be lurking in the background. There will be blowback. But that will be at a time, manner and place of Russia’s choosing.

• Important news about the Saker blog archive (please read!)
• The Big Stiff: Russia-Iran dump the dollar and bust US sanctions

Iran on the Erdogan – Assad Rapprochement Path, Meaning and Timing

 FEBRUARY 6, 2023

It seems clear that the entry of Iran into the line came at the request of Damascus, which thus wanted to balance the Iranian role with the information that constantly talks about common and intertwined personal and official interests between Presidents Putin and Erdogan.

The following is the English translation from Arabic of the latest article by Turkish career journalist Husni Mahali he published on 2nd Feb 2023 on Al-Mayadeen news site Al-Mayadeen Net:

Two days after President Erdogan’s statements, in which he said, “Let Turkey, Iran, and Syria meet to discuss possibilities for a final solution,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said, in the press conference, with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, in Moscow, “Today, an agreement has been reached aimed at Iran’s participation in the process of settling and normalizing relations between neighboring Turkey and Syria.

This means Cairo’s approval, perhaps on behalf of other Arab countries, of the Iranian role. This was recognized, the day before yesterday, by Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s spokesman, when he said, “We will be happy with Iran’s contribution to the mediation efforts with Damascus because Tehran is an important player in the Syrian crisis from the beginning.”

Minister Lavrov’s words came after a series of contacts and visits by his Iranian counterpart, Hussein Abdollahian, to Beirut, Damascus, and Moscow, followed by the visit of the Foreign Minister of Qatar, Ankara’s ally, to Tehran, days after the Abu Dhabi summit, in which the leaders of a number of Arab countries, including Qatar and Egypt, participated. This explains Minister Lavrov’s taking advantage of Minister Shukri’s visit to Moscow to talk in his presence about Iran’s involvement in the mediation efforts between Erdogan and President Assad.

It seems clear that Iran’s entry into the line came at the request of Damascus, which thus wanted to balance the Iranian role with the information that constantly talks about common and intertwined personal and official interests between Presidents Putin and Erdogan, which was reason enough for Moscow not to put pressure on Ankara on the issue of Idlib and the Syrian north. in general, but succeeded in persuading Ankara to seek rapprochement with Damascus.

There is much talk in the Turkish media about Russian financial support for Erdogan, to help him win the upcoming elections, which are crucial for Erdogan, Turkey, and Russia as well.

It has become clear that Turkey, before and after these elections, will witness interesting developments related to Erdogan’s foreign calculations, which will have direct and indirect repercussions on the internal situation. The Syrian crisis comes at the forefront of these calculations, and the reason for this is the problem of the Syrians in Turkey, which will be an important electoral material that the opposition will use against Erdogan.

It has also become clear that he, that is, Erdogan will make the minimum concessions required of him to ensure his meeting with President Assad before these elections, and his chances are still few, according to all independent opinion polls, especially after the “Nation Alliance” announced its electoral project that includes 2,300 items aimed to fix everything Erdogan destroyed during his 20 years of rule.

Among these concessions was his acceptance of Iran’s entry into the line of rapprochement between him and President Assad at this time, when Tel Aviv, Washington, Western countries, and its other allies are conspiring against Iran, which was attacked by unknown drones that targeted a military complex in the city of Isfahan.

In parallel, tension appears between Baku and Tehran due to the armed attack on the Azerbaijani embassy in Iran and the killing of one of the embassy guards. This is what some nationalist circles in Turkey and Azerbaijan exploited to launch a hostile campaign against Tehran, which they have been doing for a long time due to Iranian support for Syria in the years of the so-called “Arab Spring”.

https://syrianews.cc/in-erdoganstan-opposition-leader-kilicdaroglu-prosecuted-for-insluting-the-sultan/embed/#?secret=x8tmRrjjFE#?secret=Q3L1pc6s4C

On Tuesday, the leader of the National Movement Party, Devlet Bahchali, who is an ally of President Erdogan, said, “Azerbaijan is a state and nation of Turkish origin, the same as South Azerbaijan,” meaning northwestern Iran. This Turkish nationalist provocation is accompanied by a similar provocation and escalation from the nationalist circles in Azerbaijan, which has established and developed in recent years intertwined military and intelligence relations with “Tel Aviv”, which has established a number of espionage bases near the Azerbaijani border with Iran, which is what it did in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, especially in areas under the rule of Masoud Barzani

At a time when the Jewish lobby controls most of the Azerbaijani media, which is waging a hostile and violent campaign against Iran, which coincided with the visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to Azerbaijan, and a day later to Armenia, the two neighbors of Tehran.

Minister Lavrov’s talk about an “agreement” on Iran joining the Russian mediation between Assad and Erdogan seems clear that it came in support of the Astana process, but this time with Egyptian and Gulf approval, which may be reflected in support for the Egyptian-Turkish reconciliation path, that is, of course, if the Gulf capitals are sincere in their desire to return things to normal with Damascus.

It is not clear what practical positions the aforementioned capitals will take towards Iran entering the rapprochement line, which, if achieved, will undoubtedly be with the consent of the Gulf, which Erdogan hopes to support him financially, politically, and psychologically on the eve of the elections that will be on May 14.

Everyone knows that Erdogan was and still needs significant financial support from abroad, just as he needs media materials to help him gain more support, which will be achieved by meeting President Assad and announcing together their agreement to return Syrian refugees to their country. It is the issue that, if Erdogan succeeds in it, he will pull the rug out from under the feet of the opposition, which holds him responsible for the refugees and the entire Syrian crisis.

And while waiting for the American, Israeli, and European reaction to Iran’s entry into the mediation line between Erdogan and Assad, which is a victory for Iranian diplomacy at this particular time, everyone is waiting for President Erdogan to take practical and quick moves to resolve the issue of rapprochement before he is exposed to any external pressure, and the situation east of the Euphrates will be one of the most important elements of these pressures, since the rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus will aim, first or second, at joint action against the Kurdish “SDF” and “People’s Protection Units”.

This will be the biggest challenge for Erdogan and before Assad, especially if the Americans think about confronting Russian plans through Turkey, Syria, Iran, and perhaps Iraq as well. This may lead to a real and serious crisis in the relationship between Ankara and Washington, and it has enough reasons for such a crisis, as Turkey is a member of NATO which has many of its bases on its soil.

Ultimately, the bet remains on the success of Russian diplomacy in persuading Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar (Erdogan’s ally) of the necessity of urgency in achieving the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement, and by completing it, Erdogan’s reconciliations with Cairo, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh will acquire practical importance from which everyone will benefit.

And without it being clear how Tel Aviv will respond to these Russian moves, which Washington will obstruct by various means, and its biggest weapon for that is the Syrian Kurds with their extensions in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. They are Tel Aviv’s weapon also until the Gulf regimes convince Netanyahu and his allies in the terrorist government that the war is no longer in their interest and that the Palestinian youth generation, after the events in Jenin and the heroic Al Quds (Jerusalem) operation, is not the generation that will surrender to the conspirators against it internally, regionally and internationally, as long as there are those who stand and will stand by its side among the honorable people of the nation, and everyone knows them and they are the true source of terror for the Zionist entity and its allies in the region!

---

Syria News is a collaborative effort by two authors only, we end up most of the months paying from our pockets to maintain the site’s presence online, if you like our work and want us to remain online you can help by chipping in a couple of Euros/ Dollars or any other currency so we can meet our site’s costs.

Related Stories

• Earthquakes that have hit the world since yesterday
• Iranian aid planes arrive at Damascus airport
• Total death toll of earthquake exceeds 4,000 in Syria, Turkey
• إيران على خط المصالحة بين إردوغان والأسد.. المعنى والتوقيت
• Natural Disaster in Syria: 237 Killed, 639 Injured in Major Earthquakes

Over 2,300 killed as 7.8-magnitude earthquake hits Turkey, Syria

Monday, 06 February 2023 5:04 AM  [ Last Update: Monday, 06 February 2023 1:17 PM ]

A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake has hit Turkey and Syria, killing over 2,300 people and trapping many others.

The quake struck at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometers (11 miles) and was followed by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock 15 minutes later, according to the US Geological Survey.

Turkey’s AFAD emergencies service center put the first quake’s magnitude at 7.4.

According to the head of Turkey’s disaster and emergencies management agency (AFAD) Yunus Sezer, the country’s death toll following the earthquake has risen to about 1,500 with thousands of buildings destroyed.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the earthquake as the country’s largest disaster since 1939.

People gather as rescuers search for survivors under the rubble, following an earthquake, in the Syria city of Jandaris, February 6, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

The Ankara government has requested international aid amid the widespread devastation caused by the quake.

The president of the Turkish Red Crescent also urged the nation to make blood donations.

Kerem Kinik also said on Twitter the organization sending additional shipment of blood to the affected region.

The country’s vice president Fuat Oktay announced the suspension of schools in the 10 affected cities and provinces.

He also announced that flights to and from the airport in Hatay province have been suspended, while airports in Marash and Antep are also closed to civilian flights.

The quake leveled buildings across major cities in southern Turkey, including Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, and caught most people while they were still asleep.

“I have never felt anything like it in the 40 years I’ve lived,” Erdem, a resident of the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicenter, told Reuters. “We were shaken at least three times very strongly, like a baby in a crib.”

Rescuers search for survivors under the rubble, following an earthquake, in militant-held town of Jandaris, Syria, on February 6,2023. (Via Reuters)

The World Health Organization (WHO), meanwhile, said it was concerned about areas in Turkey from which there had been no news following the overnight tremor.

“National authorities will be focusing on search and rescue at the moment,” a WHO spokesperson told Reuters in a statement, adding “Then we will expect an increased need for trauma care to treat the injured and to support the entire health system in affected areas.”

In Syria, the country’s official media as well as rescue teams working across the nation put the death toll at over 800.

The official SANA news agency, quoting the country’s health ministry, said the quake had killed at least 461 people and left at least another 1,326 injured, including the cities of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus.

Rescue teams said over 380 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in northwestern parts of the country, which are held by pro-Turkish militants.

A man carries away an injured child following an earthquake in the town of Jandaris, Syria, on February 6, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

Reports said the Syrian border city of Harem in Idlib province was completely ruined by the quake.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad held an emergency cabinet meeting to review the damage and discuss the necessary measures, according to his office.

Raed Ahmed, who heads Syria’s National Earthquake Center, told Syrian media that this was “historically, the biggest earthquake recorded in the history of the center.”

The tremors were also felt in Lebanon and Cyprus.

People in the Lebanese cities of Beirut and Tripoli ran into the street and took to their cars to get away from their buildings in case they collapsed, Reuters cited witnesses as saying.

Turkey is in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed in the worst earthquake to hit the country in decades.

Putin offers condolences, aid to Turkey, Syria after quake

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences and offered Russian aid to Turkey and Syria following the deadly earthquake, the Kremlin said.

“We share the sadness and the pain of those who lost their loved ones and we hope for a speedy recovery for all the injured, and are ready to provide the assistance needed to overcome the impact of this natural disaster,” Putin said in a message to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

In a separate message to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Putin asked him to “convey words of sincere sympathy and support” to the families of the victims and said Russia was “ready to provide required assistance.”

People gather near a damaged site following an earthquake, in Aleppo, Syria, in this handout released by SANA on February 6, 2023. (via Reuters)

“Bashar al-Assad gratefully accepted this offer, and in the coming hours rescuers of the Russian emergencies ministry will fly to Syria,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

“The Turkish president warmly thanked Vladimir Putin for such a prompt and sincere reaction and said that he was giving instructions to the competent authorities of the country to accept the help of Russian rescuers,” it said.

Russia said it had emergency rescue Ilyushin-76 planes on standby to fly to the two countries.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu separately spoke with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar by telephone, offering condolences and support.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that Shoigu “offered to provide all necessary assistance through the military department to his Turkish colleague in the aftermath of the earthquake, including medical assistance to the victims.”

People search through rubble following the earthquake in Diyarbakir, Turkey, on February 6, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

China’s Xi condole with Turkey, Syria over deadly quake

Later on Monday, China’s President Xi Jinping sent his condolences to Turkish and Syrian leaders over the most powerful earthquake to have hit their countries in nearly a century.

Xi told Turkey’s Erdogan and Syria’s Assad in separate messages that he was “shocked” to learn of the disaster.

He also conveyed “deep condolences for the dead and sincere sympathy for their families as well as for the injured.”

“I am shocked to learn of the strong earthquake that took place in your countries, causing heavy casualties and loss of property,” Xi said in his messages, according to CCTV.

China’s official foreign aid agency said it was in communication with Turkish and Syrian authorities and “willing to provide emergency humanitarian aid in accordance with the needs of the affected population.”

People search for survivors under the rubble following the earthquake in Diyarbakir, Turkey, on February 6, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

EU mobilizes over 10 search and rescue teams to Turkey

The European Union says more than 10 search and rescue teams from the bloc have been mobilized in the wake of Turkey’s major earthquake.

“Urban Search and Rescue teams have been quickly mobilized from Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania to support the first responders on the ground,” the European Commission said in a statement.

Italy, Spain and Slovakia have offered their rescue teams to Turkey as well.

---

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

Related Videos

Noon bulletin

Related News

• Lebanon’s Caretaker Government Mulls Earthquake, Miscellaneous Files
• Devastating Earthquakes in Turkey, Syria Kill more than 1300, Felt across Lebanon 

‘Empire of Lies’: Lavrov Says World Increasingly Certain No One Immune to West’s Banditry

February 3, 2023

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

Countries are increasingly convinced that no one is immune to the West’s banditry and expropriation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a meeting of the United Russia Party commission on international cooperation and support for compatriots abroad.

“As for the West, President [Vladimir] Putin has aptly called it an ’empire of lies.’ The West, and this is confirmed by our contacts, has not been perceived globally as the beacon of democracy for a while now. The US and its NATO satellites have completely undermined their reputation as reliable international partners that are capable of coming to an agreement. The understanding that literally no one is immune from expropriation and from state banditry on the part of the former colonial powers is becoming ever stronger in the world,” the minister said.

Lavrov said Russia and some other states, whose numbers are growing, are consistently reducing their dependence on the greenback. “We are working together with like-minded people to transfer international settlements into national currencies, and create alternative payment and logistics systems so as not to depend on the whims and dictates of the country that has declared itself a hegemon. In general, we are working towards establishing a fairer global monetary, financial, trade and economic architecture, which objectively contributes to the fight against new manifestations of neocolonialism,” he said.

Source: Agencies

Related

• Putin Threatens Tough Response to Western Tank Supplies for Kiev
• How, Not When: Lavrov Lays Out Russia’s Priorities for Ending Ukraine Crisis
• Russian Forces Closing in on Artyomovsk, DPR Oficial Says