The war for Christmas: Using the Church to fight Russia

AUGUST 19, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Amidst the ongoing military war in Ukraine, there is a war of narrative and identity as the West, once again, aims to rewrite history to fit its foreign policies.

By Myriam Charabaty

In Ukraine, the war of churches has gone to a new level as the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine seeks to establish a new narrative for a Western-aligned Ukraine at the cost of identity, history, and faith.

Over the past months, one thing has become clear: the war in Ukraine will determine the future of the world order. In the event of a military win for NATO and its allies, which appears highly unlikely, Russia would be “contained”, once again, as the Minsk Agreement confessions revealed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel aimed to achieve, through the expansion of NATO’s eastern flank.

In my previous article titled How the war on the Moscow Patriarchate is a war on collective identity, I underscored how the West had employed multiple soft power strategies to create a false narratove for Ukrainian national identity, which would allegedly be framed as independent from Russia and the Orthodox Church of the Moscow and Kiev Patriarchates [which play a significant role in the collective identity of Eurasia and former USSR countries]. In this article, I will continue to highlight the unfolding of events within this content and show the significance of the battle of churches taking place in Eastern Europe.

As explained in the previous article, the US, alongside its collective West allies, utilizing the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC) strategy, have found religion to be the most efficient component of collective identity that they can exploit to their advantage. The idea was to create an allegedly national-religious divide that would create the following equation: A patriotic Ukrainian will reject any Russian-affiliated form of Christian Orthodoxy, such as that of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), and adopt the new, only partially-recognized, Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). 

This equation would entail that anyone who does not accept that illusive division as an “objective fact” would be considered a ‘traitor’ and dubbed a ‘Russian propagandist.’

Subsequently, this dresses Russia up as an enemy, despite the fact that an honest objective analysis of reality, grounded in the study of histography, shows that Ukraine is an extension of Russia. This is true to the extent that previously, Ukraine was known regionally as Kyivan Rus, even by the admission of notorious US foreign policy strategist and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The plan in motion

In 2008, a cable titled “Interfaith Dialogue” revealed that discussions regarding how to approach the strategy for religious exploitation of the targeted collective identity started as early as 2004 [at least to our knowledge and based on tracking the history of communications thanks to Wikileaks].

The Wikileaks-released cable written by the then US embassy in Kiev read: “The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, arrived in Ukraine on July 24 for a five-day visit to celebrate the 1,020th anniversary of the Christianization of the Kyivan Rus.”

Once again, this is significant, as the terminologies reaffirm the historical identity of Ukraine through its original name of Kyivan Rus, whose Christian identity dates back to 1,020 AD.

The US ambassador then made an unfounded claim and outlined the then-potential soft power strategy: “Although he [Bortholemew] has no jurisdiction over other Orthodox patriarchs, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople is viewed as the spiritual leader and primary spokesman for Eastern Orthodoxy, and many anticipated his visit might help begin to resolve the long-running split within Ukraine’s Orthodox community and lend support for President Yushchenko’s push to establish a unified Orthodox church free from Russian influence.”

Ten years later, in 2018, the fears of Moscow became a reality after the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate canceled the Synodal Letter of 1686 granting the right to ordinate the Metropolitan of Kiev to the Moscow Patriarch. Soon after, in 2019, the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine was granted a tomos of autocephaly (decree of ecclesial independence), by Bartholomew I of Constantinople, but remained only canonically partially-recognized. However, according to the Russian Orthodox Church, it was considered, as it continues to be, uncanonical.

[Note: The previous article highlights the relationship between Bortholemew I of Constantinople with the West and what the two would gain from such an endeavor, and how it would be translated in Western foreign policy applications.]

In 2022, the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, who served as President following the Maidan coup in 2014 until 2019, described this as “a great victory for the devout Ukrainian nation over the Moscow demons, a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.”

Significantly, in an interview with Lally Weymouth, Poroshenko said, “From the beginning, I was one of the organizers of the Maidan,” highlighting his work in service of the NATO-backed color revolution in Ukraine aimed at containing Russia while expanding NATO’s eastern flank and ending Ukraine’s neutrality between Eastern and Western alliance.

In March of 2022, Ukraine’s National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve announced that it had ordered monks of the UOC of the Moscow Patriarchate to leave the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, one of the most important Orthodox Christian monasteries by March 29, claiming a breach of contract.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow slammed, in the same month, Ukraine’s National Kiev-Pechersk Historical and Cultural Preserve’s order to expel the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) clergy from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, in January of 2023, the Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of the Moscow Metropolitan in Volokolamsk, Anthony, told UN delegates of the political repression exercised against the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine and called on the UN to intervene.

One example he evoked at the meeting was the revocation of Ukrainian citizenship of the Orthodox Church clergy of Ukraine.

“Depriving the citizenship of Ukrainian religious figures is undoubtedly a form of mass political repressions, which contradict the Constitution of Ukraine and international agreements that have been signed by that state,” Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony said via videoconference.

He added that “In 2022 alone, 129 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church were seized. At the same time, the legal registration of its new communities was completely blocked.”

It was also witnessed that Ukrainian army members threatened people and religious figures of the UOC-MP.

A Chronology of events

At the beginning of 2023, the main Assumption Cathedral of the historical and UNESCO-marked site, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, was officially transferred to the allegedly independent but realistically NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine after multiple searches and violations of the sanctity of the church under the pretense that it propagated pro-Russia propaganda.

On January 7, OCU priests, for the first time in the history of the historical monastery, held a service in the cathedral, and Ukrainian President Zelensky shortly after stated that “there will never be anything non-Ukrainian here again.”

In April, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, was sentenced to 60 days of house arrest, and the clergy of the Cathedral of Khmelnytskyi were charged with “hooliganism” after they refused to join the OCU or desert the Lavra.

After the refusal of the monks of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), who have resided in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra for centuries, to desert their church and join the partially-recognized Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the Ukrainian Culture Ministry also created a commission to seal the Lavra’s premises, forcing the monks to evacuate before July 4.

At the time, Nikita Chekman, the clerics’ legal advisor, posted part of the decree on Telegram. The decree read: “A commission has been created for sealing the buildings, which begins its work on July 4, 2023. In this regard, we ask you to vacate the premises and give the keys from them to the reserve. If the monastery refuses to give the keys from the buildings … the locks will be replaced and the buildings will be sealed.”

At that point, the Bishops of the UOC expressed that they felt threatened by the supporters of the NATO-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

Bishop Gedeon, also given the name Yuriy Kharon, of Makarov, told Sputnik, “all my friends and acquaintances that I talk to feel threatened because the churches are being taken away from them. And what could be more threatening than them coming to you and taking away what belongs to the Church of Christ? And they don’t take it away for anyone, they take it away for nothing. No one goes there, they don’t even have parishioners.”

Moreover, Kharon explained that “their [Ukrainian authorities’] very task is to transfer [the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra] to the OCU. After all, they do need some kind of Church. They cannot position themselves as theomachists or atheists, although they are, but they cannot say so openly, they do it through the OCU,” he said.

To further reaffirm that the war against the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church is grounded in politics, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada adopted on July 14, 2023, No. 9431, which denotes that the parliament changed the dates of three holidays, among which is Christmas.

People’s Deputy of Ukraine, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, reported that the law changing the date of Christmas from December 25 to January 7, Ukrainian Statehood Day from July 28 to July 15, and the Day of Defenders of Ukraine and the Day of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos from October 14 to October 1, will go into effect starting September 1st.

It is worth noting that the date changes follow the Georgian calendar as opposed to the Julian Calendar, which Russian Orthodox churches and many Eastern Christian denominations continue to follow.

Only to further politicize and push forward the soft power strategy of NATO in the face of history itself, Ukrainian MP Irina Gerashchenko, via Telegram, slammed Russia, Eastern Orthodox, and non-Western denominations as uncivilized in a move that cannot but remind us of the dark history of Western Christianity, which gave birth to the era of the crusades and the racist ideology it propagated. Gerashchenko said: “Now Ukrainians – Orthodox and Catholics – will celebrate holidays with the whole civilized world, but not with Moscow.”

On August 11, the Ukrainian security forces actively blocked non-OCU followers from entering one of the most sacred places for Eastern Orthodox Christians, as the Christians of Ukraine have not yet abandoned the Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches in favor of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, unlike what was planned by NATO and the Ukrainian government serving as a proxy tool in the war against Russia.

Will religion be allowed to be a tool of imperialism once again?

Many might now ask what the purpose of this chronological analysis of events offers. Indeed, it would be, at the very least, a call to return to the root problem and assess reality through a decolonized lens. Western imperialism and hegemony are shrinking, while their divisionary policies continue to flourish. The cost of playing into the Western-propagated narrative would be the destruction of society and collective identity while simultaneously tarnishing history. There is no country or minority that ever benefited from such narratives, and the examples from Africa, Latin America, and Western Asia are endless.

At a time when the church must be working toward unity, the collective West continues to manipulate and pull strings to achieve nothing but US and NATO goals, which could not be more contradictory to the collective good of Ukraine, Eastern Europe, or any other region seeking to liberate itself from destructive hegemony and regain its sovereignty and dignity. That applies to Christian denominations worldwide hoping to be liberated from Crusader ideology that has been forcefully imposed through multiple means.

Read more: The Future of Arab Christians: One path, one destiny

Russia & NATO

As the Draconian Western-led sanctions on Russia exacerbate the economic crisis worldwide, and as Russian troops gain more ground despite the influx of military aid into Ukraine, exposing US direct involvement in bio-labs spread across Eastern Europe and the insurgence of neo-Nazi groups… How will things unfold?

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HOW US AND UK GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA SPECIALISTS COLLABORATED WITH NAZIS IN UKRAINE

JUNE 20TH, 2023

Source

By David Miller

A MintPress investigation has found that a host of Western government officials, intelligence agents and assets have been directly involved in intimate collaboration with Nazi groups and individuals since at least 2014. This has included involvement in creating and operating the Nazi-run kill list in Ukraine, which MintPress revealed recently.

While Western media have belatedly been forced to concede that there are Nazi influences in Ukraine, many journalists have insisted that the visible fascist patches on uniforms are only there to troll Russians and that they are insignificant and a gift to Russian propaganda. Still, other journalists admit to asking Ukrainian service members to cover up their Nazi symbols. Yet, as we shall see, this collaboration goes much further.

Perhaps a good place to start is with the ongoing role of a key intelligence-linked official who has taken on a propaganda role on behalf of Ukraine since the launch in February 2022 of what the Russian government calls its “Special Military Operation.” Meet Cormac Smith, a member of the first Irish bobsleigh team to qualify for the Winter Olympics in 1992.  He has appeared in scores of news reports passing on Western propaganda talking points about the role of Russia in Ukraine. But who is Smith working for?

According to his own account, he is a “private citizen” supporting “Ukraine/global freedom.” Yet until December 2018, he was the deputy director of communications for the British Cabinet Office – the official body responsible for supporting the prime minister. He was also previously attached to the UK Foreign Office as the strategic communications advisor to the foreign minister of Ukraine.

Cormac Smith | Who is he working for today?

Last May, The Irish Independent claimed that Smith is “an unlikely key player in the information war,” who “estimates he has given about 100 TV, radio and print interviews with the international media in the past few months to tell Kyiv’s side of the story.” Smith has a nice line in outrageous propaganda gambits, claiming that Russians are the actual Nazis and that they murder, rape and pillage, including the rape of children.

As it turns out, the source of many of the allegations of rape – including multiple alleged cases of rape to death of children – was the Ukraine parliamentary commissioner for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova. Her evidence was alleged to be a helpline set up to report allegations of human rights abuses. Her tales were too much even for the Ukrainian government, which dismissed her at the end of May 2022.

Last year, it was comprehensively demonstrated that her stories had little evidential basis. However, even before this, she had already reportedly admitted to “promoting fake news to persuade Western countries to send more arms and aid.” Smith nonetheless carried on making vague allegations of rape (including of children) for months afterward. Naturally, no evidence was ever cited. He repeated the rape allegation almost monthly between April 2022 and January 2023. (In 2022: May, August, September, October, November, and in 2023: January, April, May).

“Systematic rape” of two million women “of all ages” | Disinformation from Cormac Smith

In April 2022, he concluded a tweet about the alleged rapes of “2 million women of all ages” with the line: “Russians are fucking animals, there is no other Russia, they must be defeated.”

Three weeks earlier, Smith asked, “Is there any difference between” Russian tank crews in Mariupol and “Nazi SS murderers who put Jews in the gas chambers.”

In December, he paraded claims that “Russians are much worse than Nazis.”

Only following orders? Cormac Smith retails MI6 talking points

“Russians are much worse than Nazis,” Smith said in December 2022

Of course, Smith denies Maidan was a U.S.-backed coup, that NATO expansion did not cause the Russian intervention and that Ukraine “is not full of Nazis” integrated into the military, police and intelligence services. Thus, we find him at the forefront of Nazi apologism. But who is he working for?

According to his own account, “Since Moscow began threatening a full invasion, he has been in daily contact with former Ukrainian colleagues and friends.” As he told The Irish Independent:

‘I was out there in December [2021] visiting and they said it would be really helpful if you can help as a commentator because you really understand us,’ he says. ‘This is also an information war and I am trying to make a small contribution. Russia is a country that lies on an industrial scale, and we were trying to get people to see that for years, but it’s only now that the scales are falling from people’s eyes.’”

Curiously, this would appear to suggest that Smith is working for actors in Ukraine. However, he has on several occasions insisted he is doing it “pro bono,” meaning without being paid. According to his LinkedIn page, he has been in various self-employed consultancy roles since January 2019.

Cormac Smith’s “Experience” | LinkedIn

Yet in September 2022, he tweeted that he had “six years experience of Ukraine, including two years working at the heart of her government.” This suggests that his self-employed role has involved significant work on Ukraine for an unknown client.

Source | Twitter

Perhaps of more relevance to his actual role is the latter part of that admission: his two years in Ukraine. What was he doing there, and for whom did he work? It turns out that he was a British government agent. Perhaps he still is. Smith joined the U.K. Cabinet Office in April 2016. He gave this account on his LinkedIn page in 2020:

After three months at the Cabinet Office I was asked to travel to Ukraine to lend communication expertise to the country’s government as strategic communication advisor to their foreign minister. I was attached to the British Embassy in Kyiv and became the first foreigner to be embedded in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Ukraine.”

“Over 18 months I was credited with introducing positive changes to…how the MFA communicated, not just in Kyiv but across the globe. I also worked with the Ministries of Health, Finance, Education & Science and the Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration; as well as advising both the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine and the NATO mission in Kyiv on crisis communication.”

Smith’s eighteen months in Kiev were followed by seven months in London with the National Security Communications Team (NSCT), a body in the U.K. Cabinet Office. Today, his LinkedIn page does not mention the NSCT, referring simply to the Cabinet Office. But back in 2020, it said otherwise.

What is the NSCT? At that point, the unit had just been set up and focused much of its efforts on influencing the public on the alleged Russian poisoning of the defector Sergei Skripal. Smith wrote in his now deleted résumé that “by the end of the Summer [of 2018], the NSCT had played a pivotal role in a ‘hands down’ victory over the Kremlin in the information war.” It is instructive to learn from this his key role in coordinating the lies and misinformation circulated by the British state in that period.

The Counter Disinformation and Media Development program in the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was run by an honorary colonel in military intelligence.  But The NSCT was funded by the U.K. Foreign Office’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) and, as can be seen in documents published by the Foreign Office, the identity of the lead agency (indeed even the “type” of agency) was redacted on “security” grounds. The only agencies liable to redact in these circumstances are intelligence agencies, suggesting that it was MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence agency. NSCT is thus revealed as a potential MI6-directed op.

CSSF document redacted on “security” grounds | Source

Cormac Smith’s Twitter profile circa 2017 | Source

Other NSCT personnel have traveled to Ukraine to advise the government. In 2018, Henry Collis of the NSCT attended and spoke at “The Hybrid War Decade: Lessons Learned to Move Forward Successfully,” held between November 7-8 in Kyiv. Unlike Cormac Smith, Collis also has a known history in military intelligence, having been a reserve officer in the Honourable Artillery Company, one of the constituents of the British Army Intelligence Corps.

STOPFAKE – NAZI APOLOGISTS

While advising the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Smith became involved with the team at StopFake (created just after the 2014 coup), including its “co-founder” Yevhen Fedchenko, an academic. On his return to London in 2018, he posed in his garden with a StopFake t-shirt. My “gaff [British slang for one’ home] is now full of memories from Ukraine,” he said. Unsurprisingly, he signs off the exchange with the Banderite fascist greeting, “Slava Ukraini!” (“Glory to Ukraine.”)

While seen by many Ukrainians as a hero and the father of the nation (a position the current government has promoted), Stepan Bandera was a Nazi collaborator whose group, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), helped carry out the systematic extermination of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians during World War Two. The full slogan originally accompanied by a Nazi salute of the kind all too familiar to students of Hitler’s Nazi movement was a call and response: “Slave Ukraini” – “Heroyam Slava!” (Meaning, Glory to Ukraine – Glory to the heroes!). Thus, endorsing this greeting is an indication of what might be seen as Nazi apologism.

Also advising StopFake in 2016-17 was the well-known U.S. official Nina Jankowicz, who, according to her own account, “advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship.” Prior to her Fulbright grant in Ukraine, Jankowicz managed “democracy assistance programs” to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a core part of the “CIA sidekick” organization, the National Endowment for Democracy.

StopFake was created in March 2014, the same month as InformNapalm, which runs the kill list. It claims to have “launched as a volunteer project” “not supported financially or otherwise by any official Ukrainian organization or government agency.” This assertion is undermined a little by the fact that it does admit to receiving funding from a host of Western governments and intelligence-linked agencies, such as the Atlantic Council, the International Renaissance Foundation (the Ukraine branch of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations), the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic, the Embassy of the United Kingdom, and nearly $250,000 from the British Foreign Office.

StopFake has also received funds from the Sigrid Rausing Trust, which states that it paid the Media Reforms Center (the parent of StopFake) £205,000 (around $250,000) between 2015 and 2019. StopFake does not admit to the money which it received from the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA front group.

The claim to be unaffiliated with the government is also undermined by a leaked Ukrainian Defense Ministry PowerPoint presentation from 2015 which lists StopFake as one of their “special projects.”

Support for the idea it is a government cutout also comes from the fact that both Smith and Jankowicz were consulting it in their capacity as government advisers.

StopFake has a deserved reputation for Nazi apologism. For instance, in 2018, the site defended military boot camps for children run by the Neo-Nazi group, the Azov Battalion. In 2017, Jankowicz hosted a StopFake video episode about Russian propaganda and Ukrainian volunteer battalions.

On Jankowicz and StopFake, The Nation stated:

 Painting neo-Nazi paramilitaries with an extensive record of war crimes as patriots helping refugees, all while working with a ‘disinformation’ group that turned out to run interference for violent neo-Nazi formations—that’s the experience Biden’s new disinformation czar brings to the table.”

Multiple established Western media outlets, including The New York Times, have reported on StopFake’s ties to white power or Nazi groups. But when local independent journalist  Ekaterina Sergatskova co-authored a long investigation exploring these links, she received death threats and was forced to flee Kiev. The intimidation tactics suggest that StopFake has more than a passing similarity to the work of InformNapalm, which hosts the kill list Myrotvorets.

Further Nazi connections are visible in the personage of Irena Chalupa, one of three Ukrainian-American sisters deeply involved in pro-NATO propaganda networks. The sisters are – so it is reported – devotees of World War Two-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and his OUN-B fascist militia.

Irena works for the U.S. state propaganda outfit Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty and was also (around 2015) a non-resident fellow at the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council. In 2016, she regularly hosted debunking posts on StopFake. According to Ukrainian nationalist sources, both of her sisters, Andrea and Alexandra Chalupa, were founders of a propaganda outlet Digital Maidan, created in New York in January 2014, which agitated for the coup. Their “closest working partners” included EuroMaidanPress which was founded by Banderite thugs and regularly publishes pieces by a wide range of official U.S. propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Alexandra was co-chair of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) Ethnic Council and her fingerprints are all over the disinformation that the Russians hacked and leaked the Clinton and Podesta emails – a core claim of the Russiagate deception. In 2015, according to her own account, Andrea was close to Michael Weiss of the Atlantic Council and various other NATO propaganda operations, such as The Interpreter Magazine. The connection of all three to Banderite propaganda networks and of Irena and Andrea to the Atlantic Council is illuminating, given the role that it appears the Atlantic Council played in a further Ukraine related propaganda operation.

PROPORNOT

A supposedly independent website helping users to differentiate between real and fake news, Propornot emerged some eighteen months after the Maidan coup. Its domain name was registered on August 24, 2016, and its first blacklist of websites allegedly purveying Russian propaganda was circulated in October of that year. It complemented the kill list on Myrotvorets (the “peacemaker” website), hacking by the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and the debunking work of InformNapalm, which MintPress revealed is the parent of both the former operations. Was Propornot part of the same op?

Unlike Myrotvorets or InformNaplam, Propornot redacted the name of the person that registered the domain. But that did not prevent the persistent Donbass-based journalist George Eliason from using basic scanning tools to reveal that Propornot was a product of The Interpreter Magazine.

The Interpreter was set up by Michael Weiss, a longtime Zionist and Neocon who is close to at least one of the Chalupa sisters. Weiss was previously been attached to the controversial U.K. think tank, the Henry Jackson Society – a group that has been widely accused of promoting Islamophobia.

Between 2013 and 2015, The Interpreter was run by the Atlantic Council. In January 2016 it became a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a direct U.S. government propaganda operation. The organization even went so far as to encourage colleagues at the Atlantic Council to denounce its activities in the hope that they would not link the two organizations together. The same trick was used on the kill-list Myrotvorets, from which Bellingcat, for example, attempted to distance itself.

Later Weiss also got involved with New Lines magazine (described by journalist Max Blumenthal as hosting “a rogue’s gallery of U.S. regime collaborators, neocons and corporate media hacks”), where he showcased his investigative prowess reporting from “inside Ukraine’s psyops”, when he is himself deeply embedded in the psyops operation.

Propornot, of course, is on the same page as the other Banderite propaganda efforts discussed here. In 2016, it tweeted a puff piece by Radio Free Europe on the “Ukrainian ‘Hacktivist’ Network Cyberbattling The Kremlin” – referring to the work of InformNapalm – with the Banderite slogan “Heroyim Slava!” (“Glory to the heroes.”)

The U.S.-backed coup of February 2014 came after significant Western involvement in Ukrainian politics. The Maidan “uprising” began in November 2013, and the government was replaced by February 2014.

This ushered in a substantial Western effort to advise the government on propaganda and “strategic communications” as well as extensive training of both military and civilian forces in the information and influence operations favored by NATO, the U.S. and the U.K. The evidence is that some of that advisory effort had already started in 2012 – well before the coup.

In 2015, a leaked PowerPoint file titled “Free Russia,” said to be from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, stated there was “co-operation” with two NATO groups (StratCom and Cyber Defense Centers of Excellence); three American groups (U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Cyber Command and Psyops); and two British units (the 15th (U.K.) Psyops and 77th Brigade).

The 15th Psyops ceased to exist in April 2015 when it was merged into the 77th Brigade, a grouping created on 1 January 2015, thus indicating British involvement in early 2015 at the latest. Amongst the revelations in a separate leaked NATO document from this period was that the U.K. military had been (prior to February 2015) training the Ukrainian forces in psyops/propaganda: “Ukrainian MOD [Ministry of Defense] receiving mentoring from JIAG [Joint Information Activities Group] (U.K. MOD) was mentioned as a past successful experience.”

The involvement of Western psyops in Ukraine continued throughout the period, and the U.S. group even posted images of their Ukraine activities on Instagram in 2019.

The U.S.-backed coup of February 2014 came after significant Western involvement in Ukrainian politics. The Maidan “uprising” began in November 2013, and the government was replaced by February 2014.

This ushered in a substantial Western effort to advise the government on propaganda and “strategic communications” as well as extensive training of both military and civilian forces in the information and influence operations favored by NATO, the U.S. and the U.K. The evidence is that some of that advisory effort had already started in 2012 – well before the coup.

In 2015, a leaked PowerPoint file titled “Free Russia,” said to be from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, stated there was “co-operation” with two NATO groups (StratCom and Cyber Defense Centers of Excellence); three American groups (U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Cyber Command and Psyops); and two British units (the 15th (U.K.) Psyops and 77th Brigade).

The 15th Psyops ceased to exist in April 2015 when it was merged into the 77th Brigade, a grouping created on 1 January 2015, thus indicating British involvement in early 2015 at the latest. Amongst the revelations in a separate leaked NATO document from this period was that the U.K. military had been (prior to February 2015) training the Ukrainian forces in psyops/propaganda: “Ukrainian MOD [Ministry of Defense] receiving mentoring from JIAG [Joint Information Activities Group] (U.K. MOD) was mentioned as a past successful experience.”

The involvement of Western psyops in Ukraine continued throughout the period, and the U.S. group even posted images of their Ukraine activities on Instagram in 2019.

A third leaked document also included references to a U.K. government-funded FCO CSSF project worth nearly £250,000 (U.S. $315,000). It was to be run in 2014/5 directly with the Ministry of Defense and the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, which expressed full “support” for the project. All activities “will be coordinated with HQ of armed forces, and will be implemented with the participation of Ukrainian official representatives.”

The purpose was to  “discredit” Russian policy towards Ukraine, demonstration of “Putin’s regime responsibility for all Donbass people troubles,” demonstration of “Putin’s inner circle personal interest in destabilization in Ukraine” and “demonisation” or Russian politicians “that are most popular in Ukraine.” This project was led by an organization (the Ukrainian Institute for International Politics) that also claimed a range of additional Western funders. In 2014, for example, it received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy.

One Ukraine Ministry of Defense PowerPoint titled “Free Donbass” referred to “The analysis of NATO’s actions in the Balkans, as well as the conduct of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” which  “demonstrated the importance of the so-called ‘perception management.’” This is said to include “public diplomacy, information and psychological operations (IPO), public information, disinformation, and covert action.”

In late 2022, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, Commander of United States Army Special Operations Command, noted that “Our Psychological Operations combination exercise now incorporates synthetic internet and real-time sentiment analysis to educate students on the speed of information.” “The speed of information, the power of information ops, might be one of the greatest lessons learned from the events unfolding in Ukraine,” he said, adding that, “Ukrainians spent the past eight years—since the annexation of Crimea in 2014—learning a lot from special operators and other U.S. trainers.”

One panelist— “speaking under Chatham House rules that forbade reporters to attribute remarks” — said, “We’d spent eight years building rapport… and building deep relationships. And all of a sudden, when it’s game on,” they were called back to the United States.” “That did not go over well… We’re seeing a master class on [strategic communications] and psyops every day. But it started out with our SOF [Special Operations Forces] guys helping them out,” the panelist added; “Two of the first strikes on Feb. 24 into the Kyiv area were on the psyop-production facility…with long-range precision strike missiles. That’s how much value the Russians put into messaging.”

Western propaganda experts and intelligence officials have been deeply involved in advising Ukraine on how best to launder its image. Take the examples of Alicia Kearns, Chris Donnelly, Gerry Osborne, Ewen Murchison and Phil Jones – all of whom have been involved in propaganda and/or intelligence with the British state.

Alicia Kearns is a Conservative MP (since 2019) and was shortly thereafter installed as the youngest chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee as well as vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Ukraine.

Kearns has a history as a British government propagandist, working very closely with (if not in) MI6 at the Foreign Office. She listed herself as “’Cross-Government lead for Counter Daesh, Syria and Iraq Effort’ on her LinkedIn page, which indicates she was running the  Counter-Daesh Coalition Communications Cell at the Foreign Office. There she oversaw overt and, what she has described in a leaked résumé, as “discreet” propaganda on Syria. The résumé was submitted in a bid for a government contract. Her activities at the FCO included working to soften the image of NATO proxy Salafi terror groups and to falsely implicate the Syrian government in chemical weapons attacks with a whole host of MI6 contractors, including ARK, Incostrat, CIJA and, most famously, the White Helmets/May Day Rescue.

The first page of Alicia Kearns’s leaked resume shows her attachment to Torchlight and mentions a trip to Ukraine

Alicia Kearns’s description of her “overt and discreet” propaganda activities

She then spent a period working covertly with MI6 contractors Torchlight in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The tender documents issued by the government specifically state that “you may not mention that the client is HMG [Her Majesty’s Government]” This latter role was never mentioned on Kearns’ LinkedIn page, and she scrubbed all mention of her other derring-do once elected to Parliament in 2019.

Among her contributions on Ukraine, she said, “I remember being stood behind Ukrainian President Poroshenko at the NATO Summit in 2014 as he discussed the Minsk Protocol, a ceasefire agreed with pro-Russia separatist leaders. The atmosphere was full of cautious optimism and hope. Devastatingly, the violence returned.” Notably, She fails to acknowledge the significant Western involvement in the subsequent violence.

She also states that “in 2015… I visited Ukraine to support the Ukrainian Government,” where she spoke at a “Ukraine Government Communications Service” event, according to her leaked résumé.  ‪She went back in March 2023 to meet Zelensky. She also takes pride in using the full Banderite slogan, “Slava Ukraini! Heroyim Slava!” on social media.

Banderite apologism from Alicia Kearns, MI6 asset and Conservative MP | Source

Chris Donnelly is a former advisor to the NATO Secretary General and an Honorary Colonel in the British Army’s shadowy Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI). He was involved in advising Ukraine from the first moment after the coup, writing a memo on March 1, 2014 (which was later leaked). “If I were in charge,” he wrote, “I would get the following implemented asap.” This would include “a cordon sanitaire” around Crimea with “troops and mines” and “Min[ing] Sevastopol harbour/bay.” “The government needs a strategic communication campaign,” Donnelly concluded: “I am trying to get this message across.”

In 2016, he oversaw a visit of five Ukrainian military intelligence personnel to the U.K. This was as part of his work with the Integrity Initiative, a Foreign Office-funded project alleged to focus on countering Russian disinformation. However, one of its principal targets was British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Ukrainian spooks were hosted and dined at the British government’s expense. Donnelly billed the Ministry of Defence for £6788 (U.S. $8,500) for the trip. Among those that they met while there were assorted British military intelligence operatives, including a day with the SGMI and with the British Army psyop outfit, the 77th Brigade.

In 2022 Donnelly was involved in plans to blow up the Kerch Bridge to Crimea (which were leaked after the bridge was bombed. The leaks were reported by Kit Klarenberg). It is notable that Donnelly’s Integrity Initiative FCO-funded propaganda project strayed into both Holocaust revisionism in the Baltics and Nazi apologism in relation to Ukraine, notably in the significant work it did with StopFake in 2016-18, during which both Jankowicz and Smith were there.

Leaked Integrity Initiative document on the visit of Ukrainian intelligence officers

Lt. Col. Ewen Murchison worked in Military Strategic Effects, in the Operations Directorate of the U.K. Ministry of Defence, between September 2012 and August 2014. This is the new name for an MoD propaganda unit which it has adopted in part in order to divert attention from the fact that its role is propaganda, all the previous euphemisms (such as “psychological operations”) having been devalued by the discovery of previous lies. Murchison attended the first NATO Stratcom Center of Excellence steering group in Latvia in July 2014, at which Ukraine was a topic of discussion.

Ewen Murchison, second from left, and Gerry Osborne, third from left, in Latvia in July 2014 | STRATCOM COE | CC

Col. Gerry Osborne was Strategic Communications Manager at the U.K. Ministry of Defence between December 2012 and August 2014 and then Strategic Communications Director until December 2014. In the former role, he undertook the following role with regards to Ukraine: “delivered and ran Strategic Communications campaigns for U.K. activity”; “Project Director for Strategic Communication capacity building missions” including to Ukraine and Georgia to address defense priorities and build governance in pre-post conflict environments.

In order to gain “global traction for the U.K. Strategic Communication Approach,” he also “took a leading role as U.K. MoD subject matter expert in the successful brand development of the Multinational Information Operations Experiment and NATO StratCom Center of Excellence and was a principal visiting lecturer to partners,” including in Ukraine. Osborne attended the 1st NATO StratCom Center of Excellence Steering Committee meeting in Riga, Latvia, on July 24-25, 2014 and contributed to its October 2014 study of “Russia’s Information Campaign Against Ukraine” along with Steve Tatham of the SCL Group. (Note that Osborne’s role in relation to Ukraine may have started before the NATO-backed coup in early 2014.)

Phil Jones –  Another British advisor, Jones worked at the U.K. Ministry of Defence between 2005 and 2018. His last five years at the MoD were in the post of U.K. Special Defence Advisor to the Ministry of Defence, Ukraine, 2013 – 2018, in Kiev. We can note that this advisory role began prior to the 2014 NATO-backed coup in Ukraine.

Jones does not boast any particular expertise in strategic communications or influence ops on his LinkedIn page, but he did take part on February 19, 2015, in a NATO StratCom Center of Excellence (COE) “coordination meeting” to assess the “capacity building needs of the Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldovan wider security sector in the area of Strategic Communications (StratCom).”

He was in Kiev through the entire period of the coup and the development thereafter of Ukrainian propaganda activities and institutions and appears to have maintained a connection with the country, including serving as a “personal advisor” to the Minister of Defense in Ukraine under the aegis of the U.K. Government’s Stabilization Unit in early 2020 and since October of that year as a Board Member of the Centre for Defence Strategy, Ukraine.

It is not known how influential he was or was not in the creation of the Ministry’s kill list or the other cut-outs it created, including InformNapalm, StopFake and others. The center is financed by two of its “partners,” the National Endowment for Democracy and UKAid, a British government operation.

Jones, right, at the NATO STRATCOM conference in Latvia in February 2015 | STRATCOM COE | CC

The 2015 NATO StratCom CoE conference was “part of the larger project to improve the strategic communications capabilities of … as well as the institutional strategic communications capacity” of Ukraine and the other countries. Leading that project were two further Western operatives, both of whom have military and intelligence experience, Steve Tatham and Nigel Oakes.

The minutes of the meeting were leaked, and the document was claimed by the chair of the meeting, Steve Tatham, to have been “subtly doctored” in a Russian “hack and leak” operation. It was claimed that one bullet point was added and that a contact name was removed from the document. This statement thus implied that the rest of the document was genuine.

From left: Steve Tatham (Director of Operations, IOTA Global), Amb. Janis Karklins, Nigel Oakes (Commercial Director, IOTA-GLOBAL), February 2015 | STRATCOM COE | CC

Tatham was attached to the NATO center for that year and had previously been the commanding officer of the 15 (U.K.) Psychological Operations Unit in the British military until 2014. He then joined the MoD propaganda unit called Military Strategic Effects until his retirement from the service later in 2014. After that, he joined Strategic Communication Laboratories, a private PR firm that was later implicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Oakes had founded the firm and was thus Tatham’s boss. The import of that scandal was that the firm used a huge amount of Facebook data to influence the U.S. presidential elections and also the U.K. Brexit referendum in the interests of Russia. As it turned out, there was absolutely no evidence that this had happened either in the U.S. or in the U.K.  Back in the real world, this document and other public information demonstrate that, on the contrary, SCL Group and its subsidiaries SCL Defence and Iota-Global (led by Tatham) were, in fact, working closely with Ukraine against Russia. This was even reported in the mainstream media, though the conclusion that the Russiagate hysteria was overblown did not percolate through.

So we have established that Western forces have been training and advising the government of Ukraine from before the coup, though noticeably more afterward. What did they do with this advice? They set up a range of cut-outs and front groups which they pretended were independent of government in order to aid plausible deniability.

Each was marked indelibly by Nazi apologism, or was run by Banderite ideologues with whom British and American officials evidently closely co-operated. The prominent role of Banderite Neo-Nazis in all of these Ukraine government propaganda operations suggests that Nazi apologism has spread into the core institutions of the government of Ukraine– perhaps more than the dominant Western view is able to admit.

U.S. Senator Graham is a Buffoon, But His Despicable War-Reveling is Symptomatic of Sinister Western Disease

June 2, 2023

Source

Lindsey Graham is of course a shame on the United States. The fact that Graham’s pernicious and disgraceful remarks barely caused any criticism from Western governments or media illustrates just how endemic and “normalized” is their Russophobia.

It would be easy to dismiss American Senator Lindsey Graham for the buffoon that he undoubtedly is. His whining high-pitched voice is compensated by his affected macho talk and habitual hawkish support for U.S. militarism. There’s never been a war that the South Carolina Republican doesn’t enthusiastically support, like a giddy schoolgirl in a cheerleader go-go troupe. He’s a puffball figure with sociopathic tendencies.

On a visit to Kiev last Friday, Graham appeared to say in a video that military support for Ukraine and “dying Russians” was the best money the United States has ever spent.

After a furious reaction from Moscow, it transpired that the video statement had been edited by the Kiev regime to make Graham’s words sound more belligerent and offensive. A longer video of his meeting with President Vladimir Zelensky showed Graham lauding military aid to Ukraine as “the best money the U.S. has ever spent”. A secondary comment about “Russians dying” was indeed spoken by the senator, but it appears to have been said in a different, less gloating context.

In any case, the controversy over what Graham actually meant to say is beside the point.

The unerring upshot of the senator’s remarks is that he is giving moral and material support to an odious regime that glorifies Nazism and the mass killing of Russian people. That’s the real point.

Senator Graham, like his deceased friend and Republican senator John McCain before him, is a frequent visitor to Kiev and a key Washington enabler of the Russophobic regime that seized power in 2014, through a CIA-backed violent coup.

Within days of his latest reprehensible remarks encouraging the war with Russia, the Kiev regime launched drone attacks on civilian centers in Moscow and in the border regions of Belgorod and Bryansk. A ground invasion by NATO-armed militants was also repelled by Russian defense forces but not before the raiders fired on residential homes, injuring several civilians. Houses in the town of Shebekino were set ablaze by rocket attacks.

Not a word of condemnation about these attacks was uttered by Graham or any other Western politician or media outlet.

What is deplorable – and disturbing – is the intensifying rhetorical green light that the United States and its NATO partners are giving to the Ukrainian forces to wage an increasingly terroristic campaign against Russia.

The Kiev regime – consistent with its Nazi ideology – has been targeting Russian civilians since it seized power in 2014. The Donbass territories, which are now officially joined with the Russian Federation, were subjected to eight years of constant fire by the NATO-trained and equipped Azov Battalion and numerous other NeoNazi paramilitary outfits that make up the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That aggression was never much reported by Western media, but it was a crucial factor in why Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention on February 24 last year.

Moscow claims with credibility that it is not targeting Ukrainian civilians and that its aim is to eradicate the Nazi formations in that country so that they no longer can inflict aggression on Russian people.

By contrast, the Kiev regime is seen to willfully fire on civilian centers in Donbass and more recently in pre-war Russian territory. The regime openly declares a policy of assassinating Russian public figures, as well as mass killing of civilians. The continual shelling by Kiev’s forces of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant – the largest civilian facility in Europe – is another indicator of the reckless terroristic practices.

The Biden administration has pumped nearly $40 billion of military aid into Ukraine since February 2022. If we add the aid from NATO’s 30 other members, the figure is nearly $65 billion. Commensurate with the increasing lethality and long-range caliber of the weapons is the rhetoric countenancing strikes on Russian territory. Western apologists talk about “Ukraine’s right to self-defense” but this is a gross distortion of the historic aggression by the NATO-backed Kiev regime, and who is the real offender.

President Joe Biden and his senior Democrat aides have moved from categorically – and ostensibly – forbidding Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory to implicit approval of such strikes. The White House’s national security spokesman John Kirby this week used weasel words to say that the United States does not tell the Kiev regime “where not to strike and how to conduct its operations”.

British foreign minister James Cleverly went further and asserted Ukraine has the right to launch military attacks on the Russian Federation. Recall that one of his Conservative colleagues, armed forces minister James Heappey, caused controversy last year when he called for strikes “deep inside” Russia even with British-supplied weapons. Such views are now becoming openly spoken without restraint, and take on a graver connotation given the supply last month of British Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

There is an absolutely nefarious and cynical use of words by the Americans, British and other NATO powers. The Kiev regime is a vile reincarnation of Nazi ideology that has shown willingness and desire to deploy terrorism without bounds. Its Western sponsors are formulating deceptive rationales that are in effect an authorization to escalate a war of aggression on Russia. The conflict in Ukraine has ineluctably become an undeclared NATO war on Russia.

Returning to the buffoonish Lindsey Graham who oozes arrogance and hubris like whipped cream from an outsized doughnut. He is of course a shame on the United States. But he is merely a symptom of a more prevalent diseased Western mindset. The fact that Graham’s pernicious and disgraceful remarks barely caused any criticism from Western governments or media illustrates just how endemic and “normalized” is their Russophobia. The lack of restraint bodes ill for any diplomatic way out of an ever-increasing confrontation between NATO and Russia.

A sinister disease is thriving in the West’s political classes. Such a disease would have been only a few decades ago denounced as “fascism” and “Nazism”. Today, shockingly, it is publicly articulated and blindly accepted.

ماذا بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا…؟

 السبت 21 كانون الثاني 2023

زياد حافظ

في هذه المحاولة الاستشرافية في مطلع 2023 قراءة وتساؤلات لمرحلة ما بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا. ننطلق في هذه القراءة من فرضية نناقشها في ما بعد أنّ روسيا ستحسم المعركة العسكرية في أوكرانيا ما قبل نهاية ربيع 2023. لكن هذا لا يعني انّ الصراع مع الحلف الأطلسي بشكل عام والولايات المتحدة بشكل خاص قد ينتهي. فالسؤال يصبح كيف سيتعامل الحلف الأطلسي وخاصة الولايات المتحدة مع الحقائق الميدانية التي تكون قد تحقّقت في الميدان؟

هناك عدة حالات ممكنة ولكن باحتمالات متباينة مبنية على قراءة في ذهنية القيادات الغربية والإمكانيات المتوفرة ضمن ميزان قوّة مختلّ لصالح روسيا بشكل عام وخاصة لصالح المحور العالمي الرافض للهيمنة الأميركية و/ أو الأطلسية. وما يُعقّد المشهد هو اعتبار الطرفين المتخاصمين أيّ روسيا والحلف الأطلسي أنّ الحرب في أوكرانيا حرب وجودية وبالتالي لا يمكن لأيّ طرف أن يتصوّر مخرجاً إلاّ النصر القاطع. وبما أنّ فرضية هذه القراءة تتبنّى حتمية النصر الروسي ما يبقى علينا هو تصوّر ما يمكن أن يقدِم عليه الأطلسي. وعندما نتكلّم عن الأطلسي نقصد بالدرجة الأولى الولايات المتحدة، ثم الاتحاد الأوروبي كمؤسسة، ثم الدول الأوروبية التي تماهت مع سياسات الولايات المتحدة وأخيراً بيروقراطية الحلف الأطلسي كمؤسسة قائمة بحدّ ذاتها. غير أنّ الحلقة الأساسية هي الولايات المتحدة لأنّ ما يمكن أن تقدم عليه سينجرّ بشكل أو بآخر على مؤسسة الحلف الأطلسي والاتحاد الأوروبي.

أما الحلقة الأضعف فهي الدول الأوروبية التي ستتعرّض إلى اضطرابات اجتماعية وسياسية بسبب التراجع الاقتصادي الناتج عن سياسة العقوبات المفروضة على روسيا وخاصة في قطاع الطاقة التي كانت تستوردها بشكل رخيص من روسيا دون أن تجد البديل الاقتصادي الذي يحرّرها من الاتكال على روسيا. والنتائج البنيوية على الاقتصاد الأوروبي هي تفكيك البنية الصناعية التي كانت ركيزة الطبقة الوسطى والاستقرار الاجتماعي. ليس هناك من آفاق إيجابية للاقتصاد الأوروبي في ظلّ ذلك التحوّل البنيوي خاصة مع صعود دول الجنوب الإجمالي وفي مقدّمته الصين والهند والبرازيل الذين سيتقاسمون الناتج الصناعي العالمي. دول أوروبا قد تكون دول متاحف التاريخ وللسياحة والترفيه وليس أكثر. فتصبح دولاً لا وزن لها في إدارة شؤون العالم. وهذا الهبوط لن يكون سهلاً بل ترافقه توترات اجتماعية وانتفاضات سياسية تعيد النظر في البنى السياسة والاقتصادية والاجتماعية لهذه الدول. وما سيساهم في ذلك الانحدار الكارثي هو الرداءة غير المسبوقة للقيادات السياسية سواء كانت في الحكم أو في المعارضة. المشهد البريطاني يتلاقى مع المشهد الألماني والمشهد الفرنسي، تلك الدول التي كانت تتصدّر المشهد الأوروبي. فأما دول الأطراف في أوروبا فقد تغرق أيضاً في حروب عرقية ودينية دون أن تكون لها ركيزة تستند إليها. فعلى سبيل المثال وليس الحصر اسبانيا تواجه حركة انفصالية في منطقة كتالونيا، وإيرلندا الشمالية قد تنفصل عن المملكة المتحدة لتلتحق بالجمهورية الإيرلندية، واسكتلندا قد تستقلّ عن المملكة المتحدة، وكورسيكا عن فرنسا، وبلجيكا تنقسم إلى قسم فرنسي وقسم فلمنكي. وما تبقّى من أوكرانيا خارج القبضة الروسية قد يذهب قسم منه إلى بولندا، والقسم الآخر إلى رومانيا ومولدوفيا. خارطة أوروبا مُعرّضة لتغيير جذري أسوة بما نتج في الحروب الأوروبية في القرون الماضية. كما هناك كلام عن انشطار إيطاليا بين جنوب فقير وشمال ثري. أما النعرات الطائفية في منطقة البلقان فمن السهل إشعالها مجدّداً مع سقوط الحكومات المركزية في حقبة الضيق الاقتصادي.
تصدّعات أوروبا

أما الاتحاد الأوروبي كمؤسسة فيشهد تصدّعات داخلية عززتها الإجراءات العبثية بحق روسيا وارتداداتها على الاقتصادات الأوروبية. فالزمرة الحاكمة في مؤسسة الاتحاد الأوروبي ملتزمة عقائدياً بمقرّرات دافوس لإعادة التعيين للاقتصادات القائمة نحو اقتصادات أكثر «لطفاً بالبيئة» على حدّ زعمهم. وهذا التوجه إلى مصادر طاقة نظيفة ومتجدّدة بشكل قسري وسريع سيؤدّي حتماً إلى تفكيك البنية الصناعية القائمة ما يوقع دول الاتحاد في حالة فقر وتراجع حضاري شبيه بالقرون الوسطى. فالطاقة هي مصدر الحضارة والعبث فيها له ارتدادات خطيرة على سكّان هذه الدول. لكن عدداً من حكومات دول الاتحاد يتململ من طغيان الزمرة المسيطرة على الاتحاد خاصة أنها لا تخضع لمساءلة ومحاسبة. وحكومة فيكتور اروبان المجرية تقود حملة التمرّد ضدّ الاتحاد قد تتبعها حكومة صربيا. من جهة أخرى أبدت بعض الدول الأوروبية كألمانيا وفرنسا امتعاضها من استغلال الولايات المتحدة للشحّ في قطاع الطاقة لفرض أسعار اضعاف ما كانت تدفعه لروسيا. ونعتت هذه الدول الولايات المتحدة بالتصرّف «غير الصديق» مع الحليف!

أما الدول الأوروبية فالتصدّعات التي أحدثتها الحرب الأوكرانية تتفاقم خاصة أنّ النموذج الاقتصادي النيوليبرالي المسيطر بعد سقوط الاتحاد السوفياتي وصل إلى طريق مسدود. كما أنّ النظام النيوليبرالي حوّل السلطة الفعلية للشركات الكبرى وخاصة بيوت المال التي لا تكترث لحال المواطنين. وهذه القوى المسيطرة على القرار السياسي والاقتصادي والثقافي في تلك الدول تستولد نخباً وقيادات من المستوى الرديء على صعيد العلم، والفهم، والأخلاق. وبالتالي ليس في الأفق المنظور إمكانية بروز قيادات أوروبية تضع مصلحة دولها فوق أيّ اعتبار وخاصة تلك الاعتبارات التي تريد إعادة الهندسة الاجتماعية وفقاً لمقرّرات منتدى دافوس. لذلك لا يمكن أن نتوقع خلال السنة الجديدة أيّ تغيير جذري في المشهد الأوروبي إلاّ ربما المزيد من التوترات والفوضى الأمنية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية ما يجعل أوروبا تفقد دوراً كانت تقوم به على الصعيد العالمي. فكيف يمكن وصف سلوك القيادات الأوروبية التي حوّلت أوروبا من ثاني كتلة اقتصادية في العالم، وربما في بعض الأحيان الأولى، إلى مجموعة دول مترهّلة. هذا انتحار جماعي أقدمت عليه قيادات حمقاء بكلّ معنى الكلمة.

تبقى الولايات المتحدة العنصر الأساسي في الحلف الأطلسي. والمشهد الأميركي معقّد حيث الخطاب السياسي السائد لدى المؤسسة الحاكمة وخاصة عند المحافظين الجدد الذين قبضوا على القرار السياسة الخارجية لا يسمح بأيّ تراجع أمام روسيا. لقد أصبحت الطبقة الحاكمة والمحافظون الجدد أسرى الخطاب السياسي حيث الانتصار على روسيا بات شرط ضرورة للبقاء. فلا يتصوّر المحافظون الجدد عالماً وروسيا موجودة على الأقلّ بشكلها الحالي. فلا بدّ من قلب النظام القائم في روسيا والإتيان بنخب سياسية تساهم في تقسيم روسيا إلى عدّة ولايات أو دول ضعيفة تحول دون إمكانية نهوض لدولة لها وزن على الصعيد الدولي. والمحافظون الجدد يحرصون على إجهاض أيّ محاولة للتفاهم مع روسيا تفادياً لحرب قد تخسرها حتماً الولايات المتحدة مهما كانت الكلفة عالية على روسيا. فعلى سبيل المثال وليس الحصر تسبّب المحافظون الجدود تسريب خبر لقاء بين مدير وكالة المخابرات المركزية وليم بيرنز ونظيره الروسي في أنقرة لإجهاض أيّ محاولة لمنع التصعيد في أوكرانيا الذي إذا ما استمرّ سيضع الجيش الروسي في مواجهة مباشرة مع الجيش الأميركي. وهذا الأمر لا يريده الطرفان سواء كان الرئيس الروسي بوتين أو الأميركي بايدن. لكن المحافظين الجدد لهم أجندة مختلفة ولا يكترثون لنتائج حتمية عن مواجهة عسكرية مباشرة بين الدولتين.

أجندة المحافظين الجدد!

السؤال المطروح هو هل يستطيع المحافظون الجدد تجاوز التحفّظات داخل الإدارة الأميركية التي لا تريد المواجهة المباشرة مع روسيا؟ ليس من السهل الإجابة خاصة أنّ المرحلة السابقة شهدت نصر المحافظين الجدد في توريط الولايات المتحدة في الصراع الذي كان بالإمكان تجنّبه مع روسيا. فهم من رفضوا التعامل مع العروض الروسية لحلّ الأزمة في أوكرانيا، وهم بالأساس من قام بالانقلاب على الحكومة المنتخبة شرعيا في أوكرانيا في 2014 وفي مقدمتهم فيكتوريا نيولند زوجة روبرت كاغان كبير المنظرين للمحافظين الجدد. وهم من استعمل اتفاقات منسك في 2015 للمراوغة لتمكين القوّات الأوكرانية لمواجهة روسيا. وهم من أجهضوا الاتفاق الذي تمّ الوصول إليه في أنقرة بين روسيا وحكومة زيلينسكي في نيسان/ ابريل 2022 بعد 3 أشهر من بدء العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا. وهم من يدفعون إلى تفريغ ترسانات الدول التي كانت في كنف حلف وارسو وإرسال السلاح والذخائر لأوكرانيا. وهم من يدفعون البنتاغون لتفريع ترسانة الولايات المتحدة من الأسلحة المتطوّرة وإرسالها إلى أوكرانيا. النتيجة لكلّ ذلك هو تدمير كلّ السلاح المتوفر لأوكرانيا وقتل الجنود ودون تحقيق أيّ تقدّم على الأرض. فسجل المحافظين الجدد هو تراكم هائل من الفشل ولكن لا يوجد من يُسائل ويحاسب. ولذلك ستستمرّ إدارة بايدن في ارتكاب الحماقات تلو الحماقات دون تحقيق أي نتيجة لصالح الولايات المتحدة حتى يصبح تحطّم أوكرانيا أمراً واقعا لا يمكن الهروب منه.

المحافظون الجدد لهم أجندة من بند واحد وهي فرض هيمنة الولايات المتحدة على العالم وإنْ أدّى ذلك إلى تدمير الحلفاء وتهديد العالم بحرب نووية لن ينج منها أحد. فهم لا يكترثون لآثار سياساتهم طالما كانوا متمسكين بمفاصل صنع القرار في الولايات المتحدة سواء في الإدارة أو مراكز الأبحاث أو الجامعات أو الإعلام المرئي والمكتوب. وشبكة علاقات المحافظين الجدد لا تقتصر على الولايات المتحدة بل امتدّت إلى دوائر القرار في مكوّنات الحلف الأطلسي وإنْ كانت سياساتهم تدمّر تلك المكوّنات.

استطاع المحافظون الجدد أن يفرضوا سردية بين النخب الحاكمة في الولايات المتحدة والدول الأوروبية المتحالفة معها مفادها أنّ الصراع مع روسيا هو صراع بقاء بينما في الحقيقة هو صراع لتدمير روسيا والاستيلاء على ثرواتها الهائلة من المواد الخام، والطاقة، والمعادن الثمينة والنادرة. كما أنّ حجم روسيا الجغرافي يهدّد مصالح الولايات المتحدة فلا بدّ من تفكيك الدولة الاتحادية. وتعمّ مراكز الأبحاث في الولايات المتحدة عن خرائط محتملة لروسيا المفككة. وبالنسبة للولايات المتحدة فإنّ الهدف الحقيقي هو الحفاظ على هيمنتها وخاصة هيمنة الدولار الذي يواجه تحدّيات من اقتصادات ترفض تلك الهيمنة. والطابع الوجودي لهذا الصراع مبني على ثقافة الفكر الرأس المالي أن التوسّع هو الوسيلة الوحيدة للبقاء. وتاريخ الولايات المتحدة مبني على التوسّع الجغرافي، في البداية تجاه الغرب حتى الوصول إلى المحيط الهادي ومن ثمّ القفز إلى الجزر في ذلك المحيط وصولاً إلى الفليبين والشاطئ الشرقي للصين.

أما جنوباً، فكانت نظرية مونرو التي منعت الدول المستعمرة في القرن التاسع عشر من التواجد في أميركا اللاتينية وجعلها الحديقة الخلفية للولايات المتحدة. وتحفظ في أدراج الإدارات المتتالية خطط احتلال كندا إذا ما اقتضى الأمر! والآن تعمل الولايات المتحدة على التوسع في القطب الشمالي حيث توجد ثروات نفطية وغازية وشرقاً نحو القارة الآسيوية. وبالتالي لا بدّ من وضع اليد على روسيا.

المشروع الأميركي لوضع اليد على روسيا كان مكتوماً بعد سقوط حائط برلين. لكن سرعان ما تبدّدت الوعود المقطوعة للقيادات الروسية بعدم التوسّع شرقاً للحلف الأطلسي. وحجر الزاوية في مواجهة روسيا هو أوكرانيا وفقاً لنظرية زبغنيو بريجنسكي الذي اعتبر أوكرانيا ضرورة أساسية للقضاء على روسيا. المهمّ هنا أنّ التوسع الشرقي للحلف الأطلسي تجاه روسيا يشكّل خطراً وجودياً على روسيا لا يمكنها تجاهله خاصة إذا ما تمّ نشر الصواريخ البالستية النووية فيها كما يدعو إليه قادة النظام الانقلابي في أوكرانيا. حاولت القيادة الروسية إقناع الإدارات المتتالية بعدم التوسع شرقاً لكن العنجهية الأميركية لم تكترث للهواجس الروسية. لسنا هنا في إطار سرد تطوّر العلاقات الروسية الأطلسية/ الأميركية بل لنؤكّد أنّ صوغ الخطاب السياسي يدعو إلى المواجهة لدرء خطر وجودي يعني الوصول إلى الحرب لحلّ المشكلة. الحرب هنا لن تقتصر على الحرب بالوكالة كما هو الحال الآن في أوكرانيا أو ربما عبر بولندا في ما بعد بل في المواجهة المباشرة العسكرية مع روسيا.

ما يؤكّد عمق الأزمة بين النخب الأميركية مقال صدر يوم السبت في 7 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2023 في صحيفة «واشنطن بوست» والموقع من كوندوليزا رايس وزيرة الخارجية السابقة في ولاية بوش الابن وروبرت غيتس وزير الدفاع السابق في كلّ من ولايات بوش الابن وباراك أوباما. في المقال اعتراف واضح أنّ الوقت هو لصالح روسيا ولا بدّ من زيادة الجهود الأميركية (أيّ زيادة التمويل والإمداد لأنها مربحة للمجمّع العسكري الصناعي) وذلك لمنع النصر الروسي. فهذا الأمر سيكون له تداعيات كارثية بالنسبة للولايات المتحدة (خاصة للمجمّع العسكري الصناعي) وأنّ إمكانية تغيير تلك النتائج ستكون صعبة للغاية إنْ لم تكن مستحيلة. والهيمنة الأميركية على العالم أصبحت مطلباً «وجودياً» بالنسبة لتلك النخب التي لا تكترث لنتائج تلك الطموحات والتي لا تأخذ بعين الاعتبار التحوّلات التي حصلت في موازين القوّة. فمقال رايس وغيتس دعوة صريحة لاستمرار الحرب مهما كانت النتائج.

فما هي إمكانيات مواجهة مباشرة بين الحلف الأطلسي وروسيا، وبالأخصّ بين الولايات المتحدة وروسيا؟ حقيقة، إنّ المواجهة في أوكرانيا لها طابعان: الأول مع الحكومة الأوكرانية والثاني الذي تمّ إعلانه منذ بضعة أيام على لسان وزير الدفاع الاوكراني أنّ المواجهة هي بين روسيا والحلف الأطلسي. هدف العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا هو تدمير الجيش الأوكراني وخلع النازيين من الحكم في أوكرانيا ومنع الحكومة من الالتحاق بالأطلسي. التطوّرات الميدانية أبرزت تدفق السلاح والذخيرة من مجمل دول الحلف الأطلسي دون أن يغيّر في ميزان القوّة في المعركة الذي كان ولا يزال لصالح روسيا. واليوم تعلن هذه الدول عن نفاذ سلاحها وذخيرتها لتزويد القوّات الأوكرانية بما كانت تملك من بقايا سلاح حلف وارسو. أما السلاح الغربي الذي يسيطر على معظم دول أوروبا الغربية فإنّ معرفة القوّات الأوكرانية بذلك السلاح ما زالت محدودة وتحتاج لوقت طويل للتتأقلم معها.

لكن هل تستطيع الولايات المتحدة الاستمرار بسياسة حرب رغم ضعف الجهوزية. ولا نقصد هنا الجهوزية العسكرية فحسب بل الجهوزية الاقتصادية. يشير الستير كروك وهو دبلوماسي سابق ومن أهمّ العقول السياسية المحلّلة للمشهد السياسي في آخر مقال له بتاريخ 13 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2023 على موقع «ستراتيجك كلتشار فوندشن» إلى أنّ الغرب يتجه تدريجياً لتحويل اقتصاداته لاقتصادات حرب وخاصة في ما يتعلّق بسلسلة التوريد في الإنتاج الصناعي. لكن في رأينا هذه عملية طويلة المدى خاصة بعد تفكيك البنية التحتية الصناعية في الولايات المتحدة والمملكة المتحدة وبالتالي القدرة على تحويل الطاقة الصناعية إلى طاقة إنتاجية حربية كما حصل في الحرب العالمية الثانية أمر مشكوك به في المدى المنظور. فاستبدال سلسلة التوريد التي اعتمدت خلال العقود الأربعة الماضية لتوطين مفاصل عديدة من القطاعات الصناعية في عالم الجنوب الإجمالي لا يمكن إنجازه بفترة قصيرة. فروسيا، ومعها الصين وسائر دول الجنوب الإجمالي لن يتركوا المجال لذلك التحويل.

لذلك نعتقد أنّ المعركة العسكرية الاستراتيجية بين روسيا وأوكرانيا قد حسمت في رأينا لصالح روسيا وأنّ ما تبقّى هو ترجمة الحسم الاستراتيجي إلى معالم مادية سواء في التقدّم الجغرافي أو في التغيير النظام السياسي في أوكرانيا وإنْ اقتضى الأمر دخول كييف لفرض نظام جديد. وقد يحصل ذلك خلال سنة 2023.

المواجهة مع الأطلسي طويلة

أما المواجهة مع الأطلسي فقد تطول خاصة أنّ الغرب يراهن على إطالة الحرب دون تدخّل مباشر للولايات المتحدة وسائر دول الحلف الأطلسي. ويعتمد المحافظون الجدد على سيطرتهم على الإعلام والسردية التي تقول بأنّ أوكرانيا «تنتصر» والقضية مسألة إمدادات فقط لا غير. لكن بدأت النخب الحاكمة تواجه معضلة تفسير انهيار خطوط الدفاع الأوكرانية وخاصة في منطقة سوليدار وباخوت. فهل ستتخذ الخطوة التالية بدخول جيوش الأطلسي بشكل مباشر في أوكرانيا؟

المزاج السياسي المعادي لروسيا في دول أوروبا غير مؤيّد للدخول في حرب مع روسيا. استطلاعات الرأي العام واضحة بهذا الشأن. فالمواطن الأوروبي بغضّ النظر عن رأيه في روسيا وحكّامها لا يريد ولا يتحمّل ثمن المواجهة. ولقد بدأت تظهر معالم «التعب» من أوكرانيا. ولكن المنحى الذي نشهده هو عدم اكتراث الحكومات الغربية للرأي العام الداخلي كما جاء على لسان وزيرة الخارجية الألمانية أنّ المانيا مستمرّة بدعم الجهود الحربية في أوكرانيا وأنها لا تكترث لآراء المواطنين وهذا بكلّ وضوح. لكن العديد من المؤشرات تفيد بأنّ الدول الأوروبية غير جاهزة وغير راغبة للدخول في حرب. أما الولايات المتحدة فهناك من يدفع إلى الدخول المباشر إلى أوكرانيا وإنْ كان الوجود العسكري الأميركي كـ «خبراء» و «مدرّبين» و «مستشارين» أصبح من المسلّمات. والمحافظون الجدد يدفعون إلى المواجهة المباشرة بعد استنفاذ الوكلاء علماً أنّ الجهوزية العسكرية الأميركية غير متوفّرة كما جاء على لسان رئيس هيئة الأركان المشتركة مارك ميلي في جلسة استجوابه في لجنة الدفاع في الكونغرس عند استلام مهامه. قال آنذاك في 2018 إنّ الجهوزية الأميركية لا تتجاوز 40 بالمائة وإنّ هدفه هو إيصال الجهوزية الأميركية إلى 60 بالمائة بحلول 2024.

وتأكيداً على ذلك يصدر معهد «أميركان هريتاج فونداشن» تقريراً سنوياً عن الجهوزية العسكرية الأميركية. وعلى مدى السنوات الخمس الماضية لم يتجاوز تقييم تلك الجهوزية مرحلة «الهامشية» أيّ لا تستطيع الحسم في أيّ مواجهة. وإذا أضفنا المحاكاة النظرية للمواجهة العسكرية مع أيّ من روسيا أو الصين أو إيران فكانت النتائج دائماً لصالح خصوم الولايات المتحدة. صحيح أنّ الولايات المتحدة تنفق أكثر من أيّ دولة في العالم لكن هذا الانفاق لا يعني تفوّقاً في الجودة كما تظهر التقارير حول فعّالية ركائز السلاح الجوّي أو البرّي الأميركي. وإذا أدخلنا في المعادلة السلاح المتفوّق الروسي خاصة في الصواريخ الفائقة لسرعة الصوت وغياب وسائل دفاع مضادة له فإنّ التفوّق التكتيكي والاستراتيجي للسلاح الروسي أصبح كاسراً.

وهناك خبراء عسكريون كـ اندري مرتيانوف يشكّكون بالقدرات البشرية لقيادة الأعمال العسكرية حيث خبرة القادة العسكريين الأميركيين في خوض حروب حقيقية ضدّ خصوم لديهم الحزم والعزم لا يُشجّع على إمكانية نصر عسكري. فتجربة الحرب الكورية والفيتنامية والعراقية والأفغانية تدلّ بوضوح إلى أنّ التفوّق الناري لا يعني بالضرورة النصر. لكن بعيداً عن هذه الاعتبارات ما نريد أن نقوله إنّ الولايات المتحدة غير جاهزة على الصعيد العسكري لخوض حرب طويلة مع دولة من طراز روسيا أو الصين على الأقلّ في المدى المنظور. لدى الولايات المتحدة قدرة نارية تدميرية هائلة تستطيع تدمير المعمورة آلاف المرّات ولكن ليس لديها كيف تترجمها في السياسة.

هناك عقول باردة خارج البنتاغون كدوغلاس مكغريغور او لاري جونسون أو فيليب جيرالدي أو راي مكغوفرن أو لاري ويلكرسون على سبيل المثال وليس الحصر تعي هذه الحقائق وتحاول ضبط إيقاع مسار السلطة السياسية. لكن المحافظين الجدد يتربّصون بها ويمنعون أن تصل تلك الآراء إلى مركز القرار. لذلك سيحتدم الصراع داخل الدولة العميقة بين من يؤيّد توجّهات المحافظين الجدد ومن يخشى من الوقوع في الهاوية. ولا نستبعد تكرار مشهد إنشاء لجنة بيكر ـ هاملتون جديدة التي كفّت يد المحافظين الجدد في إدارة بوش بعد الفشل في العراق. البديل عن كفّ يد المحافظين الجدد هو الحرب التي ستكون مدمّرة للولايات المتحدة وللعالم.

وهنا يكمن العامل الداخلي في الولايات المتحدة الذي قد يغيّر المعادلات بين الدولة العميقة والبيت الأبيض. مسلسل الفضائح التي تطال الرئيس الأميركي يتنامى ما يعني أنّ الدولة العميقة تريد التخلّص من إمكانية ترشّحه مجدّداً في 2024. فتعيين محقق خاص جمهوري الانتماء السياسي للكشف عن تفاصيل «الفضائح» يؤكّد أنّ المؤسسة الحاكمة بما فيها قيادة الحزب الديمقراطي تريد التخلّص من جوزيف بايدن والآتيان بـ كمالا هاريس في حال تنحّى بايدن عن منصبه، أو فتح الطريق لترشيح ميشال أوباما في 2024. في مطلق الأحوال فإنّ التطوّرات الداخلية قد تحوّل الأنظار عن الإخفاق في أوكرانيا ويتيح الفرصة لصوغ خطاب جديد يتجاهل الإخفاق في أوكرانيا. التغيير في السياسة التي تفرضه الوقائع يحتم تغيير في الأشخاص وهذا ما يمكن توقّعه في الأشهر المقبلة لمنع التدهور الذي الكارثي الذي يهدّد الجميع.

في الخلاصة نرى ما بعد الحرب في أوكرانيا الانتصار الكاسح لروسيا وتصدّع الاتحاد الأوروبي. كما سنرى تصاعد النقاش حول الدخول الأطلسي بشكل عام والولايات المتحدة بشكل خاص في حرب نووية محدودة بالنسبة للمحافظين الجدد. لكن في المقابل لا يستطيعون ضبط إيقاعها لأنّ روسيا لن تستجيب لرغبات المحافظين الجدد. فليس هناك من مواجهة نووية «محدودة»! لذلك لا نتوقع الوصول إلى تلك المرحلة بل ربما بداية تفكيك الحلف الأطلسي الذي فقد جدواه ومصداقيته. أما على صعيد الوضع الداخلي في الولايات المتحدة فتراكم الفشل في السياسة الخارجية سيظهر الحاجة للتغيير. من سيقود التغيير وكيف فهذا حديث ليوم آخر. الرهان هو على ما تبقّى من عقول باردة خاصة في أجواء التردّي لمستوى النخب السياسية في الغرب…

*باحث وكاتب اقتصادي سياسي والأمين العام السابق للمؤتمر القومي العربي وعضو منتدى سيف القدس

People Power in the Donbass Republics

January 09, 2023

Source

by Francis Lee

It is an open question as to why Putin and the Russian government tolerated the 2014 coup which was blatantly funded and organized by internal and external actors followed by the war in the Donbass. The coup was bought and paid for by the usual suspects – The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the ubiquitous Mr. Soros (The Open Society Foundation – OSF) and Human Rights Watch (HRW); this in addition to Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt adding their input into the Maidan during the stage-managed ‘revolution’. The shock troops of the coup were bussed in from all points in the west Ukraine to Lviv, then on to the battleground of Kiev and the Maidan. These rightwing ultras were to openly flaunt and use their improvised weapons – usually Molotov cocktails and medieval studded clubs, last used at the battle of Agincourt – against the riot police. The legitimate president, at the time Viktor Yanukovych – was ousted by this illegal show of force and forced to flee Kiev for other places outside the reach of the mob. Poroshenko – one time finance minister of Yanukovych – was thus ‘elected’ as the new President.

The first thing on Poroshenko’s agenda was the war against the Eastern provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk. According to Poroshenko this was going to be a simple ‘police operation’ which would be over in a few hours. The initial phase of the conflict was a sortie by the Ukrainian Army which rolled into Mariupol and began to shoot up the place killing a number of Russian civilians. News of this Ukie incursion began to trickle through to Donetsk and Lugansk where hastily formed local militias began to be created.

However, the significance of the events in the Southeast extended far beyond Ukraine. No sooner than the Donetsk republic was proclaimed, official Moscow let it be understood, in no uncertain terms, that it made no claim to Ukraine’s rebellious provinces. This was neither diplomatic nor a concession to the West; the conflict was far greater than anything the Kremlin found convenient or manageable. Unlike Crimea – where the process was controlled and where, after two or three demonstrations, the transfer of power was carried out by the local elite. But the process in Donetsk and Lugansk had borne witness to the elemental force of a popular movement which simply could not be managed from outside. But this spontaneous political uprising did not go down too well inside the more conservative elements in the Russian political hierarchy and the financial clique whose interests largely lie outside of Russia.

The movement itself was decentralized and rapidly threw up hitherto unknown leaders (such as Alexander Zakharchenko – see below – a heroic figure and leader who was later assassinated in a restaurant off Lenin Square in Donetsk by an unknown assailant who set off the bomb. Born: June 26, 1976, Donetsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Died: August 31, 2018, Pushkin Boulevard, Donetsk, Donetsk People’s Republic/Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). Zakharchenko had since May 2014 worked as a mine electrician in 2011 to manage the Donetsk branch of the martial arts club and eventually Pan-Slavic nationalist current and militia organization Oplot. And he had remained in situ during the war period 2014-15 and was heavily involved in the conflict.

On the 14 August leadership changed hands in Lugansk, as skirmishes took place inside the city limits between the rebels and Ukrainian Army Units. Again, after a visit to Moscow ‘’Head of Republic’’ Valery Bolotov resigned due to war injuries. His replacement was former defence minister Igor Plonitsky. Locally born the 50-year-old Plonitsky had served as an officer in the Soviet Armed Forces before becoming a dealer in fuel and lubricants during the 1990s, and later, a consumer rights inspector for the provincial administration.

Another resignation at the same time was that of Igor Strelkov. As reported by TASS the DPR Council of Ministers avowed that the defence chief was leaving his post ‘’at his own request’’ and would take up another position. Strelkov, however, vanished from the Don Bass, only to reappear in Russia a few weeks later. His replacement as defence minister was Vladimir Kononov, a Donetsk-born judo instructor and mid-ranking militia commander described by the Interpretermag site ‘’as having a firm political position and organizational skills.’’ (1)

These organizational changes were seemingly made at the behest of Moscow. The goal was evidently to install leaders in the republics who were both more predictable and more attuned to the ways of Moscow officialdom than those they replaced. Whether or not these changes in organizational structures and practise made any difference to the eventual outcome of the war was of necessity a moot point.

It had formulated and developed its agenda as events became unfolded. Absorbing such an organized and active population at a time of growing crisis in Russia itself was hardly advisable. So, the rebel republics had to rely overwhelmingly on their own resources. To the extent permitted by popular support for their cause within Russia, increased by the governments own patriotic propaganda, official Russia surprisingly left them to their own fate – provisionally at least.

However, unofficial Russia had other ideas. Volunteers from Russia began to trickle into the rebel republics, as did arms and food were also smuggled into the two republics. Military training was becoming widespread among the population. It seems an open question as to whether Putin was behind the leadership of the rebel republics, but the ensuing events took on a momentum of their own. The Ukie army was stopped in its tracks at the airport and was then decisively halted at the battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo – this was 2015. But the shelling of the Donbass continued to this day.

See below: Ukrainian Prisoners of War (POWs) captured or surrendered at Debaltsevo 2015. They looked pretty miserable, but who wouldn’t? It’s better than being killed after all.

And so here we are in January 2023 at the present conjuncture. The local war has become global, but that was always going to be the final outcome. The half-finished job (farce) of the Minsk/Normandy format was ultimately to receive its demise from the German/French delegation and the final funeral rites when Frau Merkel spilled the beans. Now that chapter is over, the Republics have finally been brought into Russia proper, and have taken their legitimate position in Russia’s heroic struggle.

But things were not always as unified and expected between Moscow and Donetsk, at least in the early stages of the war. Russia was just emerging from the disastrous period of political, social, and economic collapse. This was due in large part to what was in fact a class struggle between – a fortiori – the domestic Russian globalist neo-liberal agenda which was just as pervasive as it was in the West, if not also more acute than in the western hinterland of the globalist elite. Following the usual period of class struggle the Russian and Liberal intelligentsia had only hatred and contempt for the protesting workers, deriding them as ‘lumpens’ ‘trash’ and ‘hooligans’ and worse of all – Vatniks.

These simple Russian folk were derided to suggest simpletons unswervingly loyal to the state authorities and completely taken in by government propaganda. However, in this sense of course it was the ‘intellectuals’ uncritically parroting even the most absurd Kiev propaganda who deserved to be most regarded as being – Vatnik. Whilst the propaganda services of both Kiev and Moscow lied, the latter did so more recklessly and inventively, showing not the slightest regard for the truth and not even whether the television they showed bore any relation to the commentary. Like all elites in a period of intensified class struggle they hung on to their money, property, political and social contacts.

It would appear that this social-political upheaval was taking on a political class structure – how could it have been otherwise? The open social and political anomalies had been fermenting and the dramatic deterioration of the conditions of life that followed the change of government in Kiev was the last straw. Steep increases in the price of gas and medicines followed the IMF agreement to become a member of the EU, and ultimately NATO, so much so that a political and economic explosion was inevitable. The use of nationalist rhetoric and anti-Russian propaganda in the West, had the reverse effect in the East. The pro-Russian sympathies of the local population nor even the Kiev’s intention to repeal the status of Russian as a ‘regional language’ triggered the revolt. These open social and political anomalies had been gradually fermenting and became dangerously unstable. The dye was caste: war was to follow.

Yegorov Voronov, a resident of Gorlovka wrote on the Ukrainian site: Liva – In English – ‘The Left’.

‘’I find it hard to believe the change in my compatriots. Only six months ago they were simple folk who watched TV and complained about the bad state of the roads and of the communal services. Now they are fighters. In several hours by the provincial administration building, I didn’t meet a single person who’d come from Russia. The people were from Mariupol, Gorlovka, Dzershinsk, Artemovsk, Krasnoarmeysk … those people with whom I ride every day on the bus, stand next to in the queues, and argue with when they leave the door to the stairwell open. They were not the supercilious Kiev middle-class, set aside from the people by their special circumstances but everyday workers. And there is no denying, there are plenty of unemployed in these parts. Here were all the people who for the past month and a half had been ’begged’ in the private offices and state enterprises to take a cut in their miserable wages. So here is another conclusion – the more the wages of the Donbass residents are cut or squeezed today, the more protesters would emerge in the East.’’ (Voronov 2014 translated from Russian)

It would appear that the Donbass peoples’ militias having taken up arms converted themselves into partisan units and actually put the Ukies to flight in 2015. But the war went on with Ukie artillery pounding the Donbass, a policy which was allowed to the present day. During this 8-year period the Donbass was mercilessly targeted by the ukie artillery and suffered some 14000 casualties during that period. It has to be said that Putin and his advisers were perhaps somewhat gradual and deliberative in terms of putting an end to what was basically a massacre from 2014 until 2022 ongoing. But the decision was finally made to enter the war which was forced upon Putin by external factors which needed urgent resolution. By April 2022 Putin had made his move and if the cosmopolitan conservative elements in the Moscow bureaucracy, as well as the financial oligarch high-rollers didn’t like it – well, hard cheese old chap, as we say in the UK.

As the whole drama of the Ukraine/Russia moves into its final stages it became apparent that Ukraine, under its present leadership, was desperately looking for an exit from the imbroglio that it had initially and unwisely set for itself. Ukrainian politicians were a pretty rum bunch: all kleptocrats that had imbibed the neo-liberal weltanschauung and the promise of a golden age to come. Alas it was not to be. Even the corrupt Yanukovych only really became an enemy of the West when he committed the unforgivable sin of refusing to implement an EU/US-counselled austerity programme. Had he acted more like the Romanian leader Nikolai Ceausescu in Romania (1980s) who unwisely eagerly implemented the dreaded IMF structural adjustment policies it seems likely that Yanukovych would have become one of the darlings of the West. Ukrainians looking to the EU for their salvation – even today – are looking back to what was and not what it has now become. What we are bearing witness to are the last remnants of a social model that has been sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. It would appear that those who wished to hitch their horses to the EU cart are always in for a disappointment, not even to say passe.

‘’The aim of the EU and the United States is to transfer public wealth into the hands of private individuals who will be steered by the ‘invisible hand’ (presumably the hand behind the ‘color revolutions’) to seek their gains by selling what they have taken to western investors. Finance is the new mode of warfare, as Michael Hudson notes. We are seeing a grab for finance that in earlier times was just a military option.’’

NOTES

(1) Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism. Edited by Boris Kargalitsky, Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman. Passim.

(2) Seven Roads to Moscow – Lieutenant-Colonel – W.G.F.Jackson MC, BA, R.E. Instructor, Staff College, Camberley, 1948-50, Instructor, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, 1950-53

Cui bono? The Big Picture

October 18, 2022

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

(note: the author is not Russian, knows no Russians and has never been to Russia)

Further to my last “Motive, Means and Opportunity” summary regarding who blew up the Nordstream pipelines (the USA), let us stand back and look at the bigger global picture today. Let us ask “Cui bono?” with regard to the entire Ukrainian debacle.

First of all, we need to be absolutely clear that this insane FUBAR Ukraine situation was 100% concocted, fabricated and engineered by the USA, certainly since the droolin’ Nuland / lamebrained McCain / CIA Maidan coup of 2014, but even dating back before that. There are few situations in life where one party can be found to be 100% guilty and evil and morally bankrupt, and where the other party is 100% acting in self defence and self preservation. However history will show that with respect to this Ukraine situation, the USA was 100% the evil aggressor and Russia was 100% acting in self preservation and in defense of civilian Russian speakers in Ukraine. This is truly a war of good against evil and in case you still haven’t got the message yet, let me repeat: the USA Deep State is EVIL. This reality is indisputably obvious to any semi-comatose person remotely interested in historical, documented FACTS. For those with any remaining doubts, they need to listen to this comprehensively researched three part podcast summary by a journalist and a military historian (both Anglophones). They actually obtained their information from Western mainstream media sources before those reports and articles mysteriously vanished from the Google search algorithms (or were relegated to 500^th priority on the search list) after 24 Feb 2022:

It is unfortunate that the stupid sheeple of the West, probably 99% of the “golden billion”, believe the exact opposite of the Truth, which is testimony to the incredible effectiveness of the relentless lying propaganda pooped out from the AngloEuroZionist mainstream media sewer outlets ever since 24 Feb 2022.

Until the two recent terrorist bombings (Nordstream pipelines and Kerch bridge), Russia had been reacting in a highly restrained manner to the US and US proxy aggravations. The US started provocations many years ago and contemptuously rebuffed multiple opportunities for peaceful settlements. Russia will soon end it. How? With the humiliating defeat of Ukraine for sure, but more widely we will see the economic devastation of Europe (apart from those who buy energy in Rubles – eg Hungary and Turkey) and eventually the destabilization of the USA: perhaps with civil war and revolution in the USA, resulting from its own inevitable economic collapse. The latter two eventualities were never Russia’s intended goal, but will be unintended consequences of the malicious actions of the US and EU themselves, blowback or karma if you like.

So what motivated the USA to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine? What parties hoped to benefit from it (hint: definitely not the US public) and what were the short, medium and long term goals of the US Deep State? Context is everything and we need to view the big picture, which can be found in Andrei Martyanov’s excellent book which was nicely summarized in this review:

How Russia Views America

In short: US industrial, economic and social decay, all entirely self inflicted over the past several decades, have led to the decline of the USA as a functional society and hence to the impending loss of its unipolar global hegemony. This is a situation that the megalomaniacal “indispensable nation, shining beacon on a hill” ideologues simply cannot accept.

It is vital to understand exactly how this hollowed out mockery of a former empire continues to limp along in a moribund fashion right now, just prior to its complete self-inflicted collapse:

• Most important is to understand how the US fraudulent “economy” works. The best commentator regarding this is the brilliant Real World Economist* Professor Michael Hudson whose works are too numerous for me to mention https://michael-hudson.com/ In brief, the US economy largely operates as a global blood sucking parasite, by extracting wealth from the rest of the world and by keeping weaker countries under the its jackboot (AKA economic Neocolonialism). The major mechanism for this is the exuberant privilege of the US dollar as the International Reserve Currency, a privilege no other country has.
• This scam operates in tandem with other mechanisms that were contrived and designed and tweaked and refined to suit the US “rules based order” ever since Bretton-Woods in 1944 (which established the precursors to the World Bank, WTO and IMF, with the simultaneous designation of the USD as IRC), the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 by Nixon and especially the US creation of the Petrodollar. This was a Godfather type “offer you can’t refuse” that the USA presented to the Middle Eastern Oil producers. It was a protection racket that the Gulf States sequentially signed up to and was completed by 1974. Oil, an essential commodity, could only be bought from the Gulf States in USD, all other currencies were refused. Where could a country get USD from? Why from the USA of course, in exchange for real world products. The Petrodollar enabled the USA to obtain limitless high quality imported products for free by simply electronically “printing” US dollars, quite apart from getting free oil. It was the first class ticket on a gravy train of unimaginable wealth far exceeding the wildest fantasies of the most avaricious, rapacious, greedy robber barons. If the US could get imported goods for free, why bother to fund US domestic industries? Why not offshore their industrial production? So that is exactly what the US did.
• Petrodollar recycling involved the investment of excess oil profits from the Middle Eastern States in US debt securities / treasury bonds, which further propped up the fiat US dollar, even though the USD had no intrinsic value in itself. The value of the dollar was based entirely on the confidence of those who invested in those US “assets”. It was a confidence trick based on a protection racket. This is what enabled the US to rack up trillions of dollars in debt, backed up by the savings from foreign countries, to fund 800+ US military bases around the world. This is a debt that will never be repaid when this whole Ponzi scheme collapses.
• All this is coming to an end. The Neocons believe that the only way such US global parasitism can continue to operate is to subjugate the “World Island” ie. Eurasia. To “regime change” Putin and Xi and to ultimately Balkanise the whole of Eurasia, each banana republic to be “led” by a US puppet dictator. This wet dream “strategy” is derived entirely from the well worn CIA playbook. Such actions had been repeatedly inflicted by the US on practically every state of Latin America (the “Monroe doctrine”) and on Global South countries over many decades. The US Neocons believe that the subjugation of Eurasia is the only way to resurrect the dead corpse of Bretton-Woods and the Petrodollar and to force the rest of the world to continue funneling their Real World valuable commodities and products to the USA for free.

Much has been written about the Mackinder declaration that “who controls the World Island controls the world“, a sentiment echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ and certainly adhered to by the US Neocons who run the Deep State. This is why the sock puppet Biden, or more specifically his handlers, have been provoking dangerous confrontations in Ukraine and in the East China Sea ever since Biden’s “election”. The US has gone back to its “gunboat diplomacy” historical roots, thuggish bastardry which worked in the past to bully other countries into compliance, but which cannot work today against nations that now possess hypersonic missiles. Such US behavior is a “hail Mary” pass, the last desperate act of a failing unipolar hegemon.

The above account describes the USA’s long term Grand View, better termed a Grand Delusion. Given the advanced state of decay of the US and the unstoppable rise of China and Russia militarily, industrially, economically and socially, there is zero prospect of the USA prevailing. There are only two possible outcomes: either the USA backs down or there will be global nuclear Armageddon. There is nothing in between.

Morally and ethically speaking alone, the only correct and proper and decent action is for “Exceptionalistan” to back down. They should count themselves lucky that the rest of the world has no appetite for revenge against the US after centuries of it perpetrating genocide, slavery, racism, foreign skulduggery and exploitation of the rest of the world. However the Global South is more preoccupied with their own well being, they will simply ignore the putrefying carcass of the USA, they are only interested in “win-win” interactions with partners who actually play fair, who abide by actual UN International Law and not by the US rigged “rules based order”.

What about short and medium term more limited perspectives? What specific parties hoped to gain from a war in Ukraine? The usual suspects: the Military-Industrial-Complex, the US fossil fuel industry and possibly the US banking/financial sector.

The MIC: How does the US MIC profit from perpetual war? By all rational accounts the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was a miserable failure. However the US persisted at it for 20 years, the longest war in US history. Why? Because was a massive financial windfall for the MIC, it was the gift that kept on giving. It funded numerous McMansions and luxury yachts for the MIC executives and MIC Washington lobbyists. Please refer to appendix two at the end of this document for the explanation of exactly how the Afghan debacle, and indeed all of the USA’s endless invasions and interventions, worked in financial favor of the MIC:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nio185d72vkqkpc/ChannellingTrout_full_compressed.pdf?dl=0

Today, sending “billions of dollars” worth of US ordnance to Ukraine (much of it outdated and obsolete) represents a massive financial windfall for the US MIC. It is the only way they could profitably dispose of stuff they could never legally sell. It does not matter if 30% of it goes missing (eg Javelin missiles to be sold by terrorists from car boots) nor if the rest gets blown up by the Russians. Of course, such obsolete ordnance will need to replaced with overpriced new versions to replenish the US inventory, which will be funded by ever larger sums of taxpayers’ money, to the detriment of US publicly funded roads, rail, schools, healthcare, libraries, etc, etc.

The US fossil fuel industry: In my previous “Whodunnit” article I mentioned that blowing up the Nordstream pipelines was the only way that super expensive US LNG could ever be exported to Europe. US fracked LNG is far more expensive** than piped Russian conventional gas and far more environmentally destructive, with far higher carbon emissions. In order to understand why different energy sources incur vastly different expenses in their production and distribution, it is essential to understand the concept of EROI (energy returned over invested) as well as the full life cycles of the different energy sources: from extraction to processing to transportation to end user. Such explanation is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that high EROI energy sources are cheap to harvest and deliver, however low EROI energy sources are expensive to harvest and deliver and indeed may represent a financial net loss. Such has been true for fracked US shale oil, another Ponzi scam which was never profitable at ANY oil price (even >$100 per barrel). It was a misbegotten project that was bulldozed through using market hubris, blatant fraud, low interest bank loans and inappropriate government subsidies. Such economic stupidity and fraud is also true for the overseas export of fracked US shale gas, even before considering the expensive energy requirements to liquefy it (cooling down to around minus 163 deg C), with continued energy needed to refrigerate it during transportation in specialist highly insulated tankers (now in short supply around the world) and the multi billion dollar investments required for specialist handling at purpose designed export and import terminals (not yet built).

The USA has depleted all its economically viable sources of oil and gas, all its remaining sources have woefully low EROI and hence are super costly (energy wise and hence price wise) to extract, process and transport. Fracked shale oil is nothing like crude oil, it has the API index and volatility of paint thinner, which is why the trains used to transport it are called “bomb” trains. You cannot make diesel, the indispensable workhorse fuel, from fracked shale oil.

Russia, along with the Caspian area, has in aggregate gone past the peak of oil production, with declining EROI (with only a few fields pre-Peak eg Kashagan). However compared with the USA, the Eurasian oil and gas sources have a far higher EROI, which is IMPOSSIBLE for the US to economically compete with. The fact the the USA is now depleted of easy, cheap oil is the reason they are now stealing oil from Syria and also why they hijacked several Iranian oil tankers. Pipeline terrorism was the only way the US could sell uneconomic LNG to Europe, just as provoking a war was the only way the US could “sell” their obsolete old ordnance to Europe. Dirty tricks and devious skulduggery is how the US “free market” and “rule based order” operates, indeed how it has always operated.

The US financial sector: It was the drug crazed dream of the USA that sanctioning Russia would cause Russia to economically collapse which would then spur a coup d’etat against Putin. This goal backfired spectacularly after Russia demanded energy payments in Rubles, which caused the Ruble to appreciate beyond all expectations. Sanctioning Russia’s fossil fuel exports only caused the European and global price of oil and especially natural gas to skyrocket, leading to a huge financial windfall for Russia, which by now has largely compensated for the US theft of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves. In times of global uncertainty, many nations move their financial assets into US treasury bonds / securities as a default “safe haven” which has kept the US dollar value afloat so far. However those nations now also realize that their savings could be arbitrarily stolen at any time by the US “rules based order”, hence they are figuring out ways to shift their reserves. At present the European currencies have fallen against the USD, primarily as a result of their own energy sanctions against Russia which has caused the recession of their own economies. The European industrial sectors are poised to collapse from energy starvation. Once the BRICS+ currency arrangements and financial systems, which bypass the USD, get up and running, there will be massive flight of away from US bonds and securities and the massive international repatriation of US dollars back to the US, which will result in hyperinflation and devaluation of the US dollar, resulting in their inability to afford any imports. Along with the deindustrialised condition of the USA, resulting in no significant domestic manufacturing, that all spells extreme poverty for “Exceptionalistan”.

In summary: any initial hopes by the US banking/financial sector that they might benefit from the Ukrainian war have at best resulted in the USD remaining neutral so far, but will inevitably lead to the accelerated collapse of the USD.

CONCLUSION: The USA is screwed. Get over it.

Footnotes:

*as opposed to fraudulent economic neoliberal, neoclassical “trickle down” FIRE sector ideologues, those of the Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek ilk.

**original contracted price for Russian piped gas to Germany was $280 per 1000 cubic meters vs current market price of around $2000 (and the EU is now expected to buy US LNG at “only” 6 to 7 times the cost of domestic natural gas in the US)

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-war-russia-set-to-win-441926

EAB

A guide to the AngloEuroZionist Establishment Lexicon

September 17, 2022

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

Neoliberal economics:

Establishment version: modern free market freedom, practised by freedom loving people, to freely create freedomaceous wealth everywhere! Woohoo!

Real World Translation: rigged system to funnel wealth from the poor to the rich by imposition of slave wages and debt servitude = economic enslavement of the 99%

Disinformation:

Establishment version: anything contrary to the “truthiness” narrative espoused by Western Mainstream Media Patriots. Is Israel an apartheid state? That’s disinformation!

Real World Translation: anything which portrays the AngoEuroZionist Empire in a bad light and their enemies du jour (Russia, China, Iran etc) in a neutral or favourable light. Absolutely nothing to do with truth or facts.

National Endowment for Democracy:

Establishment version: benevolent fund by the USA to promote rule by, for and of the ordinary people in foreign countries. Yay!

Real World Translation: CIA cutout to finance astroturf campaigns to destabilise foreign governments that do not bend to the US will, in order to install US puppet regimes that will funnel wealth to the USA.

US invasion of Iraq in 2003:

Establishment version: act of “liberation” to save the world from Saddam’s WMDs and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

Real World Translation: WMD story was a fucking LIE, invasion was done to preserve the US petrodollar and control Iraqi oil assets and give massive contracts to US corporations. Killed more than a million Iraqis by 2010, so I guess you could say those Iraqis were “liberated” (from life).

Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Establishment version: unprovoked aggression by Russian dictator Vlad-the-Impaler Putin on 24 Feb 2022 because he is just plain crazy (also a vampire). So naturally the West needed to ban Russian cats and Tchaikovsky in response.

Real World Translation: belated response by Russian Duma (democratic parliament) to relentless aggression by the US/NATO since 2014 – including the murder of 14,000 civilians in Donbass, ie Russia was forced to intervene to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from genocide by the US proxies. Also more than 30 bio-pathogen labs funded by the USA (by Victoria Nuland’s own admission) were discovered in Ukraine, so there WERE WMDs in-the-making in Ukraine.

International “Rules based order”:

Establishment version: even the USA cannot properly define WTF this crapulent term means.

Real World Translation: USA makes up their one-sided rules (to always benefit itself) and orders everybody else about, otherwise foreigners face sanctions or coups or assassination of their leaders or invasion. Nothing to do with United Nations International Law.

Far too many Newspeak and Doublethink terms to itemise here!!

Commenters can think of many more!!

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

• Speaking Truth is an act of Treason in an Empire of Lies.
• Putin called the USA an Empire of Lies.
• Who is the most prominent Truth speaker in the Empire?
• Julian Assange – who is now being suitably punished for such Treason.

EAB.

Following Bolton’s Remarks, Russia: It’s Time for US to Admit Role in 2014 Ukrainian Coup

 July 13, 2022

Photo-op: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland distributing bread to protesters at the circus her imperial portfolio created, Independence Square, Kiev, Ukraine, Dec. 11, 2013

Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN (photo from archive).

Source: Agencies

It’s time for the United States to recognize its role in the 2014 “state coup in Ukraine”, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said on Wednesday.

“It’s common knowledge that the US tried to overthrow President of Venezuela. Now waiting for acknowledgement of US pivotal role in illegal Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 which is an open secret too,” the Russian diplomat wrote on Twitter, commenting on former high-ranking White House official’s remarks about his participation in staging coups abroad, TASS reported.

On Tuesday, John Bolton, a former White House national security adviser, said: “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here but you know (in) other places – it takes a lot of work.”

Unrest in the center of Kiev broke out at the end of 2013. Organizers of protests in Kiev’s Independence Square accused then President Viktor Yanukovich of refusing to sign an association agreement with the European Union. A prolonged mass demonstration of protest called Euromaidan began.

The radicals set up a tent camp, seized a number of administrative buildings in the center of Kiev and created so-called “self-defense forces”, which openly clashed with police.

The crisis culminated on February 18-20, 2014 in Kiev, when unidentified snipers repeatedly opened fire both on the protesters and police.

As a result, 80 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured. Twenty of those injured died in hospital later. There were both demonstrators and personnel of the riot police force Berkut among those killed.

Related Videos

Bolton admits plotting coups in several countries

Reasons for the Russian special military operation in Ukraine

June 28, 2022

by Batko Milacic

On 24 February 2022, Russia started special military operation in the Ukraine. The main goals of the special operation was the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine and the liberation of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.

After the far-right coup sponsored by US in Kyiv back in 2014 which resulted in overthrew of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there was a revolt of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine. The pro-Russian population of Ukraine makes it clear that they do not accept the coup that took place in Kiev. This resulted in the separation of Crimea as well as a similar desire of the people in other parts of Ukraine.

However, the new government in Kiev, which is under the full control of Washington, immediately declares them terrorists and an ‘’anti-terrorist’’ operation was launched. The result of that ’’anti-terrorist’’ operation is 13,000 to 14,000 killed civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure and many, many other crimes were committed by the new Ukrainian regime against its own people.

Also, Russia’s “special operation” was a “response to what NATO was doing in Ukraine to prepare this country for a very aggressive posture against the Russian Federation.

The Ukraine was given offensive arms, including the arms which can reach the Russian territory, military bases were being built including on the Sea of Azov and many dozens of military exercises, including many of them on Ukrainian territory were conducted under NATO auspices and most of these exercises were designed against the interests of the Russian Federation.

Since 2014 and the coup in Ukraine Russia has been initiating draft treaties, draft agreements with Ukraine and NATO, with countries of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and lately in December last year Russia proposed another initiative to the United States and to NATO to conclude treaties with both of them on security guarantees to all countries in the Euro-Atlantic space without joining any military alliance.

However, every time when Russia initiated these steps, they were basically rejected with more or less polite behavior. In 2009, Moscow proposed the European Security Treaty which NATO refused to consider and the treaty actually was about codifying something to which all OSCE countries subscribed at the top level.

Russia had suggested that the political commitments to give countries the right to choose its alliances and not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of another country, meaning that “no single organization in Europe can pretend to be a dominant player in this geopolitical space.

NATO responded to Russia by saying that there would be no legally binding security guarantees outside NATO, which makes the OSCE, which was signed by several states across the continent, completely irrelevant.

NATO, despite its promises and promises of its leaders, was moving closer and closer to the Russian border. That was unacceptable for Russia.

All of the above, in addition to Kiev’s canceling everything Russian, including the language, education, media and day-to-day use of the Russian language was, in addition to violating basic human rights, an open provocation against Russia.

So when the Ukrainian regime intensified at the end of last year and early this year shelling of the Eastern territories of the country in Donbas, in the worst violations of the Minsk Agreements which were signed in February 2015 and endorsed by the Security Council resolution, when they were targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, Russia.

More about the relations between Russia and Ukraine, the Kiev coup in 2014, American influence in Ukraine and the geopolitics of the current crisis can be seen in an excellent documentary ‘’Why the war between Russia and Ukraine began’’:

Fake News Unfit to Print

June 15, 2022

by stephenlendman

On all things domestic and geopolitical mattering most, the NYT and other MSM feature fake news over the real thing.

They suppress what’s most important to explain.

They never explained the transformation of Ukraine from democratic rule to Nazi-infested tyranny by the Obama/Biden regime’s coup d’etat over 8 years ago.

Nor do they ever report crimes of war, against humanity and related atrocities by Ukrainian forces against Donbass civilians and Russians when captured.

Or that US/Western supplied weapons and munitions have been used for cross-border aggression since April 2014.

Or that Russia’s SMO in Ukraine came after US-installed Nazified regimes in Kiev rebuffed years of good faith Kremlin conflict resolution diplomacy.

Or that Vladimir Putin authorized special military action because over 100,000 US-controlled Ukrainian forces were mobilized in preparation to invade Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the Russian Republic of Crimea.

He acted to prevent what would have been disastrous — to save lives over the other way around.

Instead of featuring important news that’s fit — and essential — to print, Times and other MSM reporting on all things Russia and Ukraine is almost consistently the other way around.

In its latest fake news edition, the Times expressed support for more US/Western weapons to Ukraine — that Russia will target and destroy as it’s doing daily.

And this Times perversion of reality:

“(D)ecisions (by US-controlled, Nazified Ukraine) are up to (US-installed tyrannical rulers the Times falsely called a) democratically elected government (sic).”

Kiev officials have no say over all things related to Russia and its SMO.

Defying reality, the Biden regime’s so-called under secretary of war for policy, Colin Kahl, said the following:

“We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate and when to negotiate (sic).” 

“They’re going to set those terms for themselves (sic).”

Ignoring hundreds of daily Ukrainian casualties and desertions, Kahl pretended that regime troops are “doing an unbelievably courageous job (sic)” — serving as cannon fodder for the empire of lies in waging proxy war on Russia, he left unexplained.

The Times also quoted the Biden regime’s so-called envoy to the NATO war-making alliance, Julianne Smith, saying:

Hegemon USA “stand(s) with Ukrain(ian) (Nazis) for as long as it takes (sic).”

In the same propaganda piece, the Times bemoaned the death of a “fallen (Ukrainian) soldier.”

Noting that funerals are “a common sight in” Ukraine, the Times suppressed information on mass slaughter and destruction in Donbass since April 2014 by invasion and cross-border shelling.

On June 13, the Times reported nothing about 5 Donetsk civilians killed by Kiev, another 39 wounded by cross-border shelling.

A daily later, two more civilians were killed in the republic, six others wounded.

For the Times and other MSM, Ukrainian casualties alone matter — not victims of its aggression.

According to Russian media on Tuesday, Donetsk residential areas are being heavily shelled with US/Western supplied rockets and artillery.

On the same day, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov explained the following:

“Horrible things are happening.”:

“Intensive shellings of civilian areas in Donetsk” continue daily,

“This is out of any limits. This is simply a military operation against the peaceful civilian population.”

Ukrainian forces are “target(ing) districts of Donetsk that they have never targeted before during all eight years since 2014.”

And this Times rubbish:

“The Russians are running out of precision-guided weapons (sic).”

“Russia (is) a paper tiger that could not seriously challenge NATO in a conventional conflict (sic).”

No Russian “blockade” of Ukraine’s offshore waters exists.

And this WaPo rubbish:

Battered and beaten “Ukrainian defenses remain solid (sic).”

“Ukrainians are well-positioned and equipped to hold off (Russian) advances (sic)” — as they continue to gain ground while Kiev troops have been on their back foot in retreat throughout Russia’s SMO.

And this WaPo perversion of reality:

“Russian losses of soldiers and equipment have been staggering (sic).”

“Ukrainian aren’t winning but they aren’t losing (sic).”

Last week, WaPo correctly headlined:

“Ukraine is running out of ammunition as prospects dim on the battlefield.”

“Hopes that Ukraine will be able to reverse Russian gains are fading in the face of superior firepower.”

That’s the reality of where things stand on the ground.

Western Foreign Policy Created Ukraine Crisis, is Creating Crisis with China

June 09, 2022

From Brian Berletic on New Eastern Outlook

https://journal-neo.org/2022/06/08/western-foreign-policy-created-ukraine-crisis-is-creating-crisis-with-china/

Two recent events, both overshadowed by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, help illustrate how the same problematic aspects of Western foreign policy driving the Ukrainian conflict are hard at work in provoking conflict with yet another global power, China.

Western complaints about an alleged naval base China is accused of building in Cambodia and an altercation between Chinese and Canadian patrol aircraft in the North Pacific reflect growing tensions between an inflexible and declining Western unipolar order and a rising China that increasingly refuses to subordinate or explain itself to the West upon the global stage.

While peaceful coexistence would not only be possible but preferable in regards to global peace, stability, and prosperity, the US-led “rules-based international order” has openly declared its intentions of inhibiting China’s rise and has demonstrated just how far in terms of disrupting global peace, stability, and prosperity the US and its allies are willing to go to achieve this.

China’s “Secret Navy Base” 

The Washington Post in an article titled, “China secretly building PLA naval facility in Cambodia, Western officials say,” would claim:

China is secretly building a naval facility in Cambodia for the exclusive use of its military, with both countries denying that is the case and taking extraordinary measures to conceal the operation, Western officials said. 

The Washington Post already reported that:

The establishment of a Chinese naval base in Cambodia — only its second such overseas outpost and its first in the strategically significant Indo-Pacific region — is part of Beijing’s strategy to build a network of military facilities around the world in support of its aspirations to become a true global power, the officials said.

The unnamed Western officials failed to point out just how far China actually has to go to become a “true global power” in terms of building military installations abroad. A 2021 Al Jazeera article titled, “Infographic: US military presence around the world,” noted that, “The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.”

The notion that China’s activities in Cambodia are “secret” is also questionable. Both China and Cambodia are surely aware of the full extent to which China is or isn’t involved at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base. Neither nation is required to provide an explanation to the United States whose own shores are located thousands of miles away.

While the Washington Post accuses China of using  “a combination of coercion, punishment and inducements in the diplomatic, economic and military realms,” to “bend” nations to Beijing’s interests, it is actually the United States who threatens not only Cambodia, but nations throughout Southeast Asia, all of whom seek to cultivate constructive ties with China.

Late last year, according to AP in their article, “US orders arms embargo on Cambodia, cites Chinese influence,” Cambodia was openly penalized simply for its growing ties with China. The article would claim:

Beijing’s support allows Cambodia to disregard Western concerns about its poor record in human and political rights, and in turn Cambodia generally supports Beijing’s geopolitical positions on issues such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The construction of new Chinese military facilities at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base is a point of strong contention with Washington.

Clearly, US claims about Chinese foreign policy is pure projection. The US would be pressed to cite specific “punishments” China has dispensed to nations simply for cultivating ties with the US. The US, on the other hand, not only imposed various economic penalties on Cambodia’s government, Washington has also sponsored opposition forces who openly aim to overthrow the current Cambodian government.

In a 2017 Phnom Penh Post article titled, “Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear,” a senior Cambodian opposition leader – Kem Sokha – would be quoted as saying:

“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can change the dictator [Slobodan] Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes. 

He would also claim:

“I do not do anything at my own will. There experts, professors at universities in Washington, DC, Montreal, Canada, hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the dictator leader in Cambodia.” 

If Cambodia, whose constitution prohibits the presence of foreign military facilities on its territory, is willing to risk public backlash for allowing China to construct a “secret base” there, it might be as a means of preventing the country from becoming the next Ukraine.

Canada’s “Global Jurisdiction” vs Chinese Sovereignty 

Also in the headlines recently is a row growing between China and Canada over the latter’s air patrols “monitoring” North Korea.

A Reuters article, “China warns Canada over air patrols monitoring North Korea sanctions busting,” would claim:

China’s foreign ministry warned Canada on Monday of potential “severe consequences” of any “risky provocation,” after Canada’s military last week accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft monitoring North Korea sanctions busting.

“The UN Security Council has never authorized any country to carry out military surveillance in the seas and airspace of other countries in the name of enforcing sanctions,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a media briefing. 

And indeed, the UN has not authorized Canada or any other nation to fly air patrols to enforce sanctions on North Korea. The Canadian patrol aircraft are so far from Canada’s own territory, they are actually based in Japan throughout the duration of these “monitoring” missions.

The United States’ self-appointed role as arbiter of who can and cannot construct military bases around the globe and Canadian patrol aircraft assuming global jurisdiction including off China’s own shores and around its neighbor’s shores, are illustrations of American exceptionalism (and by extension, the exceptionalism of their closest allies).

This exceptionalism led to the crisis in Ukraine which followed the US overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014.  The US began a process of militarizing the nation which shares a substantial border with the Russian Federation. Whereas the US was allowed to send its military to Ukraine to train forces for an eventual war with Russia, the US and its allies decried Russian military deployments within Russia’s own territory to put in check the growing threat Ukraine was being transformed into.

Whereas the US was able to interfere deeply in Ukraine’s internal political affairs, Russia was accused of backing separatists in the Donbas region and thus of fuelling the 8 year war that precipitated ongoing military operations in Ukraine today.

Likewise, the US is able to maintain hundreds of military bases around the globe, including those constructed as part of illegal wars of aggression and subsequent occupations. China, however, is apparently “wrong” for the potential use of part of an existing Cambodian naval facility, with Cambodia’s consent.

US allies like Canada are able to fly “patrol aircraft” thousands of miles from their own shores to “monitor” territory near Chinese shores and those of their neighbors, but China is unable to scramble its own aircraft to intercept and monitor these “patrols.”

In the past, this exceptionalism went unchecked. Because of China’s rise, there is a growing sense of balance being reintroduced into what has been until now a unipolar world order. While the US government and the Western media will complain about China’s growing ties both economically and militarily throughout the Indo-Pacific region, there is little the US can do to stop it. Its increasingly coercive and aggressive policies to punish nations seeking to do business with China may disrupt whatever balancing act many nations have been performing between East and West, driving them deeper into partnership with China and thus only succeed in isolating the US itself.

Only time will tell if the US continues down this increasingly destructive path, Ukraine being only the most recent victim of American exceptionalism, or if the US begins finding a constructive role within the emerging multipolar world.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Russia’s Necessary and Legal Military Response to US/ NATO Aggression in Ukraine

May 28, 2022

Source

By Maria Gritsch

Evidence shows that Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine is a legally justified, critically necessary, and predictable response to the US’ recent escalation of its decades-long aggression against Russia in Ukraine–militarily, in the international corporate media, in cyberspace, and in the political-economic arena.  The US’ hostile actions against Russia were summarized in a 2019 US-Army funded RAND Corporation blueprint for “Over Extending and Unbalancing Russia.”  Underlying US actions is its aim is to dismember and asset-strip Russia–to appropriate its coveted oil, gas, and mineral resources and vast agricultural lands–and to enable US investors’ access to Russia’s economy. This is a step towards the US’ overarching goals of controlling Central Asia and achieving full spectrum dominance or global hegemony. Although the US war against Russia in Ukraine started years ago, US aggression escalated under the Biden administration and created conditions that posed an immediate existential threat to Russia and necessitated its military response.

In 2014, the US initiated a proxy war against Russia by engineering the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected president. This ignited a bloody civil war on Russia’s border in which the US-installed and US-armed Kiev regime attacked the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk whose largely ethnically Russian residents opposed the US coup. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented the Kiev regime’s attacks that killed thousands of civilians and terrorized the populace. In 2015, the US-installed then-president, Petro Poroshenko, publicly articulated Kiev’s anti-Russia stance and its policy for the Donbass:

“We will have jobs—they will not. We will have pensions—they will not. [….] Our children will go to schools and kindergartens—theirs will hide in the basements.”  Popular Ukraine pundits openly called for Donbas residents’ extermination. In 2015, Congress lifted its ban on funding Ukraine’s neo Nazi militias and placed US military trainers on the ground inside Ukraine. NATO and the CIA also began training Ukraine regime forces–effectively establishing Ukraine as a de facto US/NATO mercenary state. During the past eight years, Russia exhibited enormous restraint as the US and Ukraine violated the Minsk Protocols and rejected requests for diplomacy. In 2021, US aggression against Russia increased dramatically once Biden took office–in Ukraine and in the Black Sea. US actions and Ukraine President Zelensky’s public statements generated immediate threats to the survival of the Russian nation-state.

Russia’s Military Response Was Over-Determined By Four Existential Threats 

The US government and the corporate media falsely characterize Russia’s special operation as entirely ‘unprovoked’ and an ‘illegal invasion’. These allegations ignore four conditions which each independently compelled President Putin and the Duma to initiate Russia’s denazification and demilitarization operation and which establish this intervention as consistent with international legal norms.

Chief among the factors necessitating Russia’s immediate military response were indications of an imminent new massacre as 125,000 Ukraine forces amassed along the border of Donbass in December of 2021. This was never reported in the US corporate press.  Instead, the US government and corporate media repeatedly stated that Russian troops were gathering on Ukraine’s border (inside Russia) and predicted an impending Russian invasion. In hindsight, US intelligence could make this accurate claim because it was aware of the menacing buildup of Ukraine forces. Anticipating an imminent massacre, Russia was obligated to intervene militarily because it had a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the citizens of Donbass.  R2P is a political commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity; it was endorsed by the United Nations at its 2005 world summit.

Second, on February 19, 2022, Ukraine President Zelensky announced that Ukraine would seek to acquire nuclear weapons, saying, “I want to believe that the North Atlantic Treaty and Article 5 will be more effective than the Budapest Memorandum.” Zelensky’s expressed desire to acquire nuclear weapons represented a dangerous threat to Moscow and signaled that the window of opportunity for conventional military intervention was closing.  It is unlikely that Zelensky operates completely autonomously; Biden publicly bragged about his control over Ukraine government policies and has remunerated Zelensky following Zelensky’s implementation of anti-Russia policies and actions.

Third, Zelensky’s repudiation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was a reminder of Ukraine’s intent to join NATO. For years, US President Biden advocated NATO membership for Ukraine, assuring Zelensky as recently as December 11, 2021 that this was in Ukraine’s own hands. NATO membership would entail NATO nuclear missiles inside Ukraine, aimed at Moscow. Ukraine’s geographic proximity to Russia eliminates the crucial minutes in which Moscow could verify and respond to an attack and would effectively place Russia and the US at DEFCON Level Two. The US dismissed Russia’s December 17, 2021 verbal and written requests for a diplomatic response to its security concerns. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken deliberately rejected Russia’s entreaties and ignored the predictable consequences of Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. Renowned international relations scholars, diplomats and politicians, including John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry warned that NATO membership for Ukraine was a dangerous provocation which would trigger Russia’s military response.

A fourth threat requiring Russia’s intervention was the presence of US Department of Defense-operated biolabs inside Ukraine. Russia’s concerns were validated on March 11, 2022 when Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted during Congressional questioning that the Ukraine biolabs contained ‘biological materials’ which the US ‘did not want to fall into Russian hands’. While the pathogenic biological agents in these biolabs do not technically constitute bioweapons, they can become bioweapons once there is a ‘mechanism for spreading the agent.’ A delivery mechanism need not be sophisticated to be effective.  Bioweapons researcher, Jeffrey Kaye, described the extreme level of US secrecy surrounding the biolabs. Kaye noted that the Director of the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, Robert Pope, did not reassure when he stated that, “the Ukraine biolabs currently did not have the ability to manufacture bioweapons.”

Russia’s Intervention Is Consistent with International Law

These four US-generated conditions represented urgent existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state and contradict US claims that Russia ‘illegally invaded Ukraine’ and that Russia’s intervention was unprovoked. Russia was compelled to intervene militarily to neutralize these threats and its response is consistent with the United Nations Charter of 1945 concerning international rules governing a state’s use of military force. The United Nations allows two exceptions to its prohibition of the use of force in international law: “self-defence under Article 51, and military measures authorised by the Security Council in response to “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.” In particular, the UN Charter notes, “there is no problem – and never has been – with that state, without first seeking Security Council approval, using military force ‘preemptively’.’ Both exceptions apply to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine: Russia perceived an imminent threat to the Donbas and an imminent threat to the Russian nation-state.  The immediacy of these threats obviated any requirement that Russia seek prior UN Security Council approval. Seeking UN approval would be futile, in any case, because the United States, a permanent UN Security Council member, is the principal combatant generating the hostilities.

Under the Biden administration, what began in 2014 as a US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine transformed into the US’ direct war against Russia. The US’ covert and overt military actions establish it as a legal “co-belligerent.” Now, the US continues to flood Ukraine with billions of dollars of heavy weapons and provides intelligence to guide Ukraine’s attacks on Russian forces. The US blatantly states that it wants to “weaken” Russia and that Russia must be defeated.  This is the US whose regime change wars in the Middle East killed 5 million; whose 1955-1975 war against Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia cost 3.4 million military and civilian lives. This is the US CIA whose coups and illegal interventions around the globe since its 1947 inception left a trail of bloodshed and chaos. Russia is legally and crucially defending the Donbas and the Russian nation-state against the US quest for global domination. The US generated four existential threats to the Donbas and to the Russian nation-state that necessitated Russia’s immediate intervention. The US—not Russia—is the illegal aggressor in Ukraine.

Testimony Reveals Zelensky’s Secret Police Plot to ‘Liquidate’ Opposition Figure Anatoly Shariy

April 14th, 2022

Accounts from the Ukrainian SBU’s torture prison reveal Zelensky’s plot to assassinate exiled opposition figure and leading journalist Anatoly Shariy.

By Dan Cohen

Source

KIEV, UKRAINE — On March 7, Anatoly Shariy, a Ukrainian opposition figure and one of the country’s most popular journalists, received an email from Igor, an old acquaintance with whom he had not communicated for years (Igor is an alias used to protect his identity).

“Please help me find a place to live, suggest an apartment or an agent. I’m ready to do any work for you, whatever you say,” the email read.

“I realized that he was in the hands of the SBU,” Shariy told me, using the acronym for Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, notorious for its persecution of anyone accused of sympathy for Russia. “I understood whom I was talking to and did not particularly answer anything.”

Shariy suspected that the SBU wanted Igor to surveil him for an assassination attempt.

Four days later, Shariy received an email from a different address. This time, it was Igor, confirming Shariy’s suspicion that the first email had been written by an SBU agent. Igor explained that he had been interrogated and tortured for his ties to Russia.

“I realized that the SBU officers were preparing an assassination attempt on Anatoly and decided to agree to warn him that his life was in danger,” he told me in a phone call.

Shariy has lived in exile since 2012, having fled during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych and received political asylum in the EU. His opposition to the 2014 Maidan coup d’etat grew his profile and made him a target of Petro Poroshenko, who came to power in its wake. The neo-Nazi movements he had exposed in prior years had gained serious political power and intensified their aggression against him. In 2015, Lithuanian media branded Shariy as a “favorite friend of Putin,” and the Lithuanian government soon revoked his asylum. Shariy, meanwhile, had sought protection elsewhere and relocated to Spain, where he has continued to grow into one of the most popular critics of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

However, his predicament has hardly improved. In 2019, Alexander Zoloytkhin, a former soldier of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, published the address and photos of the house where Shariy, his wife Olga Shariy and young child live, as well as photos of Olga’s car. Ukrainian neo-Nazis demonstrated outside his house and he received numerous death threats.

Today, he is a top target of the Kiev government, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, and the SBU.

‘I helped him to become the president’

Shariy began his career in journalism in 2005, first writing for women’s magazines, and then conducting investigations into Ukrainian oligarchs, organized crime, and neo-Nazi networks.

He became a well-known critic of the 2014 U.S.-orchestrated Maidan coup d’etat, using his YouTube channel video blog to amass an enormous online following. Today, he has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube, 340,000 on Facebook, and 268,000 on Twitter, becoming one of the country’s most popular journalists despite living outside its borders for a decade.

In 2019, months ahead of the presidential election, Shariy founded a center-right Libertarian political party, naming it after himself: The Party of Shariy. Appealing to young professionals and small and medium business owners, Shariy’s online popularity transformed him into an important player in building a coalition, consistently polling between three and six percent.

Shariy actively supported Zelensky during the campaign, attacking the incumbent Poroshenko. “I thought he [Zelensky] was determined to follow up on his election promises. I helped him to become the president. It’s true me and my team did anything for him to get the post,” Shariy told m

Shariy’s activists were effective in disrupting Poroshenko’s campaign events.

“We were following Poroshenko everywhere we went with his pre-election tour. There were so many people in each city and town organizing themselves in groups and asking Poroshenko hard questions,” Shariy recalled.

In one July 2019 event, Shariy’s supporters trolled Poroshenko’s campaign motto – “Army – YES, Language – YES, Faith – YES” – answering “Shariy” instead of “YES.”

But Zelensky’s carefully-crafted campaign image of a political outsider dedicated to stamping out rampant corruption – copy-pasted from his hit television series, “Servant of the People” – turned out to be a farce.

Zelensky cut deals with oligarchs and stacked his cabinet with the same figures he spent his campaign criticizing. He spurned the coalition-building efforts that typify Ukraine’s multi-party parliamentary democracy, preferring to cut backroom deals for votes. He even sided with his former bitter rival Poroshenko’s own party in Odessa’s 2020 municipal elections despite his famous quote during the pre-election debates when he told Poroshenko, “I AM YOUR VERDICT” – “Я – ваш приговор”.

“When I realized he was not intending to change anything, the corruption was the same or even worse, we changed our mind,” Shariy said.

Following Zelensky’s victory, he proceeded to eliminate state funding for parties that received under 5% of the vote in the elections. Shariy’s party, having received only 2.23%, was among those that were cut off.

Spurned by the new president who he helped get elected, Shariy publicly denounced Zelensky, remarking that he should “curtail their state funding and shove it up their ass.”

Zelensky betrayed his campaign promises of reform and meaningful progress in the Donbass stalemate, leading to a rapid decline in popular support. This left a niche open which was quickly filled by the Party of Shariy. While older voters traditionally supported Viktor Medvedchuk’s “Opposition Platform – For Life”, Shariy’s online presence and style appealed to younger generations.

On the ground, Party of Shariy activists began to protest Zelensky with the same tactics they had wielded in his favor against Poroshenko, appearing at his events and demanding his resignation.

As Shariy gained political capital and was even considered a possible contender for the presidency in a future election, the war of words between him and Zelensky turned into a bitter rivalry.

Zelensky lashed out at Shariy, accusing him of “trying to increase your rating at the expense of my rating, the rating of the president.”

Ukrainian journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was recently arrested by the SBU, commented that Shariy’s party is much stronger than the polls indicate. “It is strange to think that the government would spend so much energy on an insignificant opposition party. All this makes us think that their ratings are higher than they are trying to show us,” he remarked.

Hunting dissidents on a political ‘safari’

Throughout the election, the anti-Poroshenko antics of the Party of Shariy were met with severe violence from the president’s base, which included ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists. Some who dared to ask Poroshenko difficult questions were beaten. In Zaporizhzhya, a man’s car was set on fire and a woman was assaulted by Poroshenko himself.

This violence continued after Zelensky won the election and his rivalry with Zelensky intensified.

At a June 2020 demonstration in which Party of Shariy members demanded an investigation into the politically motivated attacks on their members, neo-Nazi groups attacked using smoke bombs and tear gas, followed by brawls inside the subway. Afterward, these groups announced a political “safari,” offering rewards for attacks on Party of Shariy members. This marked the escalation of violence meted out against the political opposition, especially targeting the Party of Shariy and its supporters.

In one incident, masked men beat a young man in Kharkiv, leaving him severely injured and hospitalized. In Vinnytsia, men from the neo-fascist group Edelweiss beat a party member in broad daylight, breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung. In another incident, a member of the U.S.-trained neo-Nazi Azov Battalion attacked a member inside their party office.

While members of his party were beaten in the streets and inside their offices, Shariy was under threat. On July 8, 2020, he accused Zelensky of ordering his assassination, publishing a confession given to Catalan Police by Zoloytkhin, the man who had published his address the year before. Zoloytkhin was wanted in Ukraine for numerous serious crimes, including participation in the 2016 kidnapping and beating of journalist Vladislav Bovtruk. Zoloytkhin confessed to police that top figures in the Zelensky government had instructed him to murder Shariy, and Shariy published a video confession from Zoloytkhin.

In February 2021, the SBU charged Shariy with treason, accusing him of “spreading Russian propaganda,” and summoned him to an interrogation by the SBU. After he declined to appear, he was put on the national wanted list.

Shariy is blacklisted on Myrotvorets (Peacemaker), an online database of what its owner declared “enemies of the state,” containing personal information and addresses. The blacklist is affiliated with the Ukrainian government and SBU and was founded by Anton Herashchenko, now an advisor to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. The site accuses Shariy of violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and financing terrorists.

Multiple figures were killed soon after their names were added to the list. On April 15, 2015, Oleh Kalashnikov, a politician from the pro-Russia Party of Regions, the party of ousted president Victor Yanukovych, was shot to death in Kiev. The next day, Oles Buzina, a prominent journalist and author who advocated for unity among Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia and campaigned to outlaw neo-Nazi organizing, was shot and killed near his apartment. The culprits were found to be Andrey Medvedko and Denis Polishchuk, neo-Nazis who had served in government and military positions – their confessions were published by Shariy. Yet Buzina’s murderers not only walk free but have received government funding.

The scene of Oles Buzina’s murder. Credit | Ruptly

Zelensky has opened numerous criminal cases against Shariy. He personally enacted sanctions against him, his wife Olga Shariy, and his wife’s mother, Alla Bondarenko. Shariy’s political party was banned in Zelensky’s sweeping March 20 decree that criminalized all opposition parties, accusing them of ties to Russia.

‘An ordinary person confesses at least to the murder of John F. Kennedy’

Prior to the Russian offensive, Shariy appeared often on Russian television, positioning himself as a neutral alternative to Zelensky and his regime of pro-EU neoliberals and neo-fascists. When Russian tanks rumbled across the Ukrainian border, he immediately denounced the invasion, calling the Kremlin foolish for invading a country that he believed would collapse on its own. Nonetheless, the threats against him intensified and Zelensky sought to eliminate Shariy from political life and kill him altogether.

On March 2, Ukrainian intelligence agents arrived at the Kiev home of Igor. The following is an account he gave to MintPress over the phone on April 7.

They took him into custody, handcuffing him and placing a sack over his head, then took him to a sports complex-turned temporary prison, connected to the main SBU headquarters, located in central Kiev between Vladimirskaya, Irininsky, Patorzhinsky, and Malopodvalna streets. Originally constructed as a Trade Union Palace following the Russian revolution, this building became the Bolshevik headquarters of Ukraine. Since 1938, it served as headquarters of the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation, the NKVD of the U.S.SR, and today, as a torture center for Russian prisoners of war and Ukrainians accused of having ties to Russia.

Inside the narrow underground rooms converted to an expansive state security complex, Igor says, SBU agents oversee members of the “Territorial Defense” – ultra-nationalist civilians and criminal elements who the government gave weapons in the streets in the first days of Russia’s offensive – as they beat, torture and even kill their prisoners.

Numerous prominent figures have been kidnapped and tortured by the Territorial Defense and the SBU. Among them are mixed martial arts fighter Maxim Rindkovsky, who was beaten on video and allegedly killed, Denis Kireev, the Ukrainian negotiator who was murdered after being accused of treason, and Volodymyr Struk, the Mayor of Kreminna, who was murdered after being accused of supporting Russia. Even Dmitry Demyanenko, former SBU head of the Kiev region, was shot dead in his car on March 10, accused of sympathy for Russia.

Russian MMA fighter Maxim Ryndovsky was captured by Ukrainian forces.

There is a horrifying video of him being tortured. I will not post it, but it's becoming a big story in Russia.

Authentic Ukrainian war crimes are now being used to justify escalating the war. pic.twitter.com/9xYrxJbSnn

— Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) March 5, 2022

In fact, the SBU is a project of the CIA. Following the 2014 coup, the security service was headed by Valentin Nalyvaichenko, who was recruited by the CIA when he was the Consul General of Ukraine in the United States. The CIA reportedly has an entire floor in the SBU headquarters.

In November 2021, Zelensky appointed Oleksandr Poklad to head the SBU’s counterintelligence. A former lawyer and cop with ties to organized crime, Poklad is nicknamed “The Strangler” – ​​a reference to his favorite method of obtaining testimony from his victims. One article describes another torture method known as ‘The Elephant:’

“A gas mask is put on the victim of torture, and pepper tear gas from a spray can or a poisonous aerosol such as dichlorvos is launched into the gas mask hose. After such torture, an ordinary person confesses at least to the murder of John F. Kennedy.”

Shariy say Zelensky's SBU intelligence – which he likens to Hitler's SS – is using the Russian offensive as a pretext to carry out crimes.

"No one can help these people now." pic.twitter.com/1XsuuQqrUo

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) March 20, 2022

The United Nations and Amnesty International have both documented SBU torture prisons.

The SBU also closely collaborates with neo-Nazi groups including Right Sector, Azov, and C14, which was contracted by the Ukrainian government to conduct street patrols.

‘A small Guantanamo’

Inside the sports complex-turned temporary torture prison, Igor says the sack over his head was replaced with a blindfold, leaving him only he could only see his legs.

A Ukrainian businessman who had long worked in transportation logistics – including stints in Moscow – a story typical of many Ukrainians, since returning to Kiev, Igor had maintained business ties to Moscow and Crimea, which had joined the Russian Federation after a successful referendum in 2014.

Several family members, including his mother, live in Russia and he regularly visited them until relations between the two countries reached a boiling point in 2021. “With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the events of February 24, my mother started to call me very often because she was very afraid of my status,” he told me.

Territorial Defense began to round up anyone suspected of sympathizing with Russia, as well as Ukrainians with cross-border ties, whether family or business.

Inside the makeshift prison, Igor says he identified 25 to 30 distinct voices of imprisoned men, and saw 10 to 12 men in Russian military uniforms, what he believes were prisoners of war. Two of the Russians were severely beaten in order to motivate the others to give on-camera testimony about their hate for Putin and opposition to the war.

Other detainees were religious people known for assembling at military installations to pray for peace and homeless people who had no way to abide by the evening curfew and were swept up by nighttime patrols.

While many of those inside the complex were kept for a couple of hours and released, others were severely beaten. “It was like a small Guantanamo,” Igor recalled.

Igor says that he was interrogated three times, with each session lasting between 15 and 30 minutes. The beatings were carried out by Territorial Defense volunteers while SBU officers instructed them on how to torture and asked him questions.

“They used a lighter to heat up a needle, then put it under my fingernails,” he told me. “The worst was when they put a plastic bag over my head and suffocated me and when they held the muzzle of a Kalashnikov rifle to my head and forced me to answer their questions.

But he says the suffering he endured was minor in comparison to the torture of the Russian prisoners of war, who were beaten with metal pipes while the Ukrainian national anthem played on repeat in the background. “I could hear it because all the torture was done in a nearby room. It was psychologically severe. This was done at night, the sounds of beatings were constant. It was difficult to sleep.”

Listening to conversations of other prisoners, Igor understood that two prisoners from Belarus were beaten to death, identifying one as a man named Sergey.

‘Like a Jew in Nazi Germany’

The existence of the torture prison was corroborated by an account I received from Andrey, a man with citizenship from Russia and a western European country (Andrey is also an alias to protect the identity of the source).

When he was first brought to the prison, Andrey recalls, he witnessed police beating what they told him was a Russian saboteur.

“It’s like mob justice, you know? You just find somebody that roughly fits the description and you take it out on him,” he said.

Tied to a chair, police repeatedly punched the man in the torso, the face, and back of the head as blood poured from his mouth.

“The police weren’t even interested in what he had to say. They would ask a question, he would start speaking slowly and they would hit him in the head,” he said. “They were taking out aggression and fear on him like a punching bag.”

Andrey says police threatened him with the same but he was spared because he held citizenship from a western European country. “I was told that If it wasn’t for my second passport, I’d be killed. I don’t know how much of that was to influence and scare me, or how much it was real,” he said.

During one interrogation, he says he was blindfolded, his hands were taped behind his back, and he was driven to an unknown location. After being taken into a building and up and down flights of stairs, he was thrown to the floor and kicked in the head.

Andrey recalls hearing ultra-nationalistic Ukrainian music in the prison. “Hard bass, electro, rock, rap – it was either to deprive us of sleep or to mask what was going on behind the music.”

Inside the prison, Andrey met Igor, who slept on an adjacent mat. He recalled being uncertain if Igor was an actual prisoner or if he was a plant that would attempt to extract information. In their brief exchanges, Andrey memorized a phone number Igor gave him and contacted him after he was released.

Andrey remains inside Ukrainian borders since his release, worried that the anti-Russia hysteria engulfing Ukraine could lead to his injury, or worse. “I’m like a Jew in Nazi Germany,” he told me.

The Ukraine Crisis with Dan Cohen and Scott Ritter

Dan Cohen is joined by former United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

Dan Cohen•Mar 1

They were very interested in his daily routine’

During Igor’s interrogation, SBU agents found contact information for his uncle, a former Soviet military officer. Believing that his uncle had influence in the Russian military, SBU agents called him to demand he facilitate an exchange of Igor for prisoners of the Snake Island incident.

When SBU agents found videos of Shariy on Igor’s phone, officers from a separate department were called in. From then on, they began to treat him better, removing his handcuffs and giving him larger quantities of food.

Igor’s connections to Shariy were minimal, limited to occasional contact via text message. In 2015, Shariy published a video about an incident in which Igor’s truck cargo was held for ransom by Aidar Battalion militants at a border crossing between Crimea and Ukraine.

Igor subsequently filmed interviews and events for Shariy, though they never met face to face. Nonetheless, SBU agents apparently saw Igor as an opportunity to gather sensitive information about Shariy’s habits.

Hours later, the chief officer came to interrogate him about materials and interviews he had worked on for Shariy. He was then given a blanket and allowed to sleep for two days.

After another interrogation, they instructed him to travel to Spain, where Shariy is taking refuge.  “Their main intention was that I would stay at Shariy’s side, assist him in preparing materials, and report to the officers what he is working on, what his status is, what his family is doing, what foods he eats, and where he shops. They were very interested in his daily routine, his movements, and people close to him. They wanted me to be as close as possible to him and at his side as often as possible.”

It was then that Igor realized Shariy’s life was in danger.

“As far as I understood, based on the information that I had to convey, the liquidation of Anatoly Shariy was being prepared, since he poses a danger to the government of Ukraine and criticizes the actions of the SBU, the government, and President Zelensky,” he told me.

The SBU told him an agent stationed in Spain would contact him after his arrival and provide him with further instructions.

Another department of the SBU notified his brother of his arrest, demanding a $1,000 bribe for his release. “For the SBU, this is just a way of making money. They were detaining people and asking for money in exchange,” he said. His brother paid the bribe on March 10, freeing Igor, though Igor’s car was confiscated as collateral. “There are many cases like this. They take civilian cars for the needs of SBU and the Ukrainian army.”

SBU agents had assured Igor that he would be able to pass through Ukrainian borders and enter the European Union, a nearly impossible task for Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 who are subject to mandatory conscription.

After his release, Igor says he stayed in Kiev for ten days, resting and regaining his health. He then traveled to Transcarpathia, a region in Western Ukraine. Instead of following the orders of the SBU, Igor went to a different western European country. On April 2, he contacted Anatoly Shariy by email, informing him that he believes he is under threat.

“I warned Anatoliy Shariy that there could be an attempt to kill him in Spain.” Shariy understood that Igor’s call represented an extraordinary threat. “I was very tense with questions about the fact that he could be sent to me so that he could find out the places I visit, up to where I eat. The direction of these questions clearly indicates that they have the idea of ​​my physical elimination,” Shariy told me by email.

Now in an EU country, Igor is facing an uncertain future and is unable to return to Ukraine. “I am afraid, not only for my own life but for my relatives and my friends,” he says.

Medvedchuk’s face is clearly bruised, apparently a result of beatings from Zelensky’s SBU goons. Don’t expect any questions about this image to appear in the pages of the NYT or in CNN’s 24 hour media circus. Can’t allow anything to undermine the pro-war narrative. pic.twitter.com/A0qhhmeaj8

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 12, 2022

With opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk, bruised and apparently beaten, in the custody of SBU, the threat against Shariy is clear. He continues to receive death threats against him and his family, sometimes 100 per day, he says.

Left: “Look it’s your future.” Right: “I hope they will find you soon.” Screenshots courtesy of Anatoly Shariy

Dan Cohen is the Washington DC correspondent for Behind The Headlines. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. He tweets at @DanCohen3000.

Interview: London Paul from the Sirius Report – Move to Multipolarity

April 12, 2022

Source

Amarynth interviewed London Paul

London Paul from the Sirius Report has a story to tell. This is the story of the history of multipolarity and the global move to a new multipolar structure in our world with the old single polarity hegemon now collapsing.

He graciously agreed to this 5-question written interview to bring Saker readers up to date and we are grateful for his time.

Paul will probably not be a new voice for some of our readers, but for others, you can read his background here: https://www.thesiriusreport.com/about/

His work was some of the first that was scrubbed from the internet and for years, he was laughed out of the house, as what he was observing was just too different to be true. To avoid the continual internet scrubbing games, he set up a monthly subscription podcast, where he discusses current affairs in relation to economics.  Yet today, we are in this process and we can visibly see the progress and effects of this massive move to a multipolar world.

At the Saker Blog, we’ve focused on the Russian military action in the Ukraine. We understand that this is a fight not against the Ukrainians but against the US-led NATO military alliance, and the single power center, west.  The Ukraine is but a proxy. In the bigger picture, this move toward multipolarity is one of the reasons if not the major part, for this military action.

With that short overview, we move straight into the questions.

Question:  Paul, give us the background. How did you arrive at your understanding? What drew you to this specific study and what makes you excited about it, even today? Where do we stand as a world community? What do we stand to gain by changing the complete underpinnings of our world to a fairer system, where each country has a voice?

Response:  I was originally an academic who studied Physics at degree and PhD level. I then moved into the financial services sector, so that’s when my interest and understanding in economics and finance started in earnest. It was around the time of 9-11 that I developed a serious interest in geopolitics.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Global financial crisis, which I predicted in 2006, it was immediately apparent that the West had not implemented any policies which would resolve the causes of that crisis. They merely decided to bailout the financial system and then implemented QE and ZIRP which should only ever have been implemented on a very short term basis. I wrote to Western governments at the time advising them not to implement these policies for more than a few short months because the consequence of long term implementation is unsustainable asset bubbles, failing economies addicted to – and propped up by – cheap credit, and a completely unsustainable financial system. Developments made by China, Russia and other nations, which we will come to in the next question, were the first genuine suggestion that those nations saw the need for an alternative to what had become the utter failure of unipolarity by the 2008 GFC.

It was around a decade ago that I came to know the architects of what is now known as the multipolar world. They understood back in the 1990s that US hegemony and the US Dollar were in terminal decline. They advised the Chinese and Russians that they needed to develop a multipolar world, the resurrection of the Old Silk Road, to seek win-win cooperation with other nations and to develop sound monetary policies and currencies backed by real wealth, such as gold and commodities. From discussions with these architects I began to study China, Russia and the wider Global South in great detail as we began to see the embryonic development and implementation of the multipolar world.

Given these are fundamentally game changing developments in the so-called global order, my interest remains as strong today as it was a decade ago. We are now seeing a world that operates in two distinct spheres: a rapidly developing and ascendent multipolar world and a unipolar world in terminal decline. When these two worlds collide as the latter seeks to retain its relevance, we then see the risk of serious conflicts developing such as what we are now witnessing in the Ukraine.

Whilst the developing multipolar world is a decades-long project in the making, its adoption and the benefits that will be accrued are multifold, in that it seeks to develop nations domestically, bilaterally and in multilateral formats. It strives to promote true globalisation, not the highly abusive Western adoption of this theory. By promoting win-win cooperation and the development of vertical poles across the entire world, it will provide prosperity and security for everyone.

Many will argue that this is a nonsensical pipedream but it is already becoming a reality. Challenges will remain, not least in the ideological bias that exists between nations and in deep-seated historical grievances. However, all journeys have to start with the first step and that is what we are already beginning to see across the Global South. The sum of our parts can be infinitely greater than the individual components and that is something we, as responsible custodians of this planet, should be striving to achieve. It is for these reasons that my understanding of this paradigm shift remains as strong today as it was a decade ago.

Question:  Is it only China and Russia that designed the concept of multipolarity for us, or were there more involved historically?

Response:  Whilst I think it would be fair to say that China and Russia were the trail blazers for multipolarity, we should not forget the role that has been played by many other nations in the last decade which is equally as important and significant.

Firstly, there was the announcement of the BRIC alliance, which became the BRICS alliance, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in 2009, in the immediate aftermath of the GFC of 2009. We also saw the foundation of the SCO or Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2001, which included Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Full membership was granted to India and Pakistan in 2017. There are also four observer states: Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran (soon to become a full member), Mongolia and 6 dialogue partners.

We also saw the creation of the EAEU in 2014 which now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. In 2016, there was the formation of the AIIB or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is a multilateral development bank focusing on developments in Asia. The bank currently has 105 members, including 16 prospective members.

We have also seen the modification of long-term institutions such as the ASEAN alliance or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations which was founded in 1967 and is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation in the realms of economic, political, and security integration between its members and in a wider context throughout Asia.

One development which has been years in the making was the adoption of the RCEP or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in early 2022, which is a free-trade agreement. It includes Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.

These are just a few examples of developments in multilateral formats. There have also been many developments in bilateral and trilateral formats which are all pieces of the development of this multipolar world.

Question:  What do you envisage as we move further into this world configuration in terms of trade?  What could be the everyday currencies? As we are a Russian-oriented site, there is much concern about the Russian Central Bank. Will we end up with Central Banks? Has Russia’s move to set a price standard for gold ended in a gold backed Ruble, or a commodity based currency? Explain to us what it means in broader terms for the ordinary person?  Why should we be interested?

Response:  Global trade, finance and ecoomies will literally go through a revolution. The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) has laid the foundation for a global trade system but it is fluid and subject to change. There is no doubt that banks and the global financial system are going to undergo radical changes, including their investment arms. There will be a radical overhaul of the function of governments and financial institutions to include central banks. We expect to see the adoption of sophisticated barter systems which will facilitate trade whereby the respective counter parties will set transaction prices as they see fit, free from government interference.

Blockchain and other technologies will totally change the way business is conducted. The multipolar world will seek to facilitate trade and allow trading partners to generate and keep their wealth. There will be a radical overhaul of how basic needs are managed to include healthcare, education, food and energy security. The domination of unsustainable cartels and cooperations will come to an end and we will see an explosion of creativity in terms of industry, medicine, science and the arts. Ultimately, it requires a complete overhaul of all existing Western institutions which have ruthlessly abused their responsibility for self-interests.

We will see, in a very broad sense, the marrying of true capitalism and socialism into workable models for nations and alliances. The ongoing challenge to US unipolarity will continue via the Global South and, in essence, the Eurasian Trade Zone. Existing Western institutions will continue to unravel and the insidious practices that have underpinned the world since WW2 will continue to be exposed.

In terms of future currencies, we are going to see the adoption of new payment mechanisms outside the purview of the USD / UST complex. This will include nations trading in local currencies, adopting future cryptocurrencies or digital currencies in multilateral formats such as the EAEU and the ASEAN nations. The backbone of future trade will be in currencies which are backed by real wealth, to include gold, perhaps silver and a basket of commodities. There will be no single world reserve currency in the future. China has always made it clear that it doesn’t seek to make the yuan a world reserve currency but merely to internationalise its currency. Russia also has that possibility via its vast commodity resource base, for the future global adoption of the ruble in terms of trade, particularly with the Global South but also the West and not just in terms of demanding ruble for gas as we are currently seeing.

The 5000 ruble per gram price fix was merely meant to stabilise internal markets and miners. It has now been removed because that stability has been achieved. Unfortunately, in the West, that announcement was interpreted as meaning that Russia had backed the ruble with gold and it was wrongly conflated with a far bigger story which we have discussed for years about the future role of the ruble in international trade.

For Russia, the stability and global adoption of the ruble in terms of trading commodities will be beneficial to the Russian economy, its financial stability and enable it to access markets free from the potential interference of the US via the weaponization of the dollar. It will also permit Russia to continue to implement further domestic changes, not least including the development of the Russian Far East and its integration into the BRI. A stable ruble and the benefits that will accrue will also see greater international investment in Russia in the future.

Question:  People talk about food scarcity and prices are rising everywhere.  So, is this purely sanctions blowback, or the result of years of fiscal mismanagement?  And then how is an ordinary person to hedge.  Where are we going to see major country defaults on their debts?

Response:  We have spoken about food and energy insecurity for a number of years. The sanctions blowback has merely exacerbated a long-term problem caused by utterly failed policy decisions. Firstly, nations should have long since been aware of the flaws of a global ‘just-in-time-system’, in that if one aspect of that mechanism fails it can have damaging consequences.

We have seen during the pandemic how global supply chains were impacted in very serious and sudden ways. The just-in-time-system was the primary cause of this. Whilst we are not advocates of protectionism, because we see that as being equally flawed, nations need to understand that they need to become more self-sufficient where possible, in terms of food and energy security. There also needs to be a radical overhaul of this just-in-time-system because the pandemic highlighted eloquently why it is quite simply unfit for purpose.

This also highlights the need for nations to adopt a new approach via multipolarity which seeks to find mechanisms to address the future disruption of supply chains, how nations can begin to address some of those concerns domestically, particularly in terms of food production and via their energy needs. There also needs to be an understanding that this Western ideological zero-sum game mentality is contributing to global food and energy instability because of its very weaponization by Washington and its vassal states.

In terms of energy security, the desire to push ahead with the utterly flawed green revolution has also led to unnecessary imbalances in the energy mix, putting even Western nations at serious risk of future energy and food insecurity including rationing and perhaps even the complete absence of basic sustenance food items. There needs to be a radical global overhaul of how we address energy needs and how we can address this via a mix of traditional fossil fuels, nuclear reactors to include a global drive for commercial fusion development, hydroelectricity and the adoption of viable renewable energy sources because currently the renewable sector is appallingly myopic and fails to address obvious issues such as the cost in terms of energy, resources, commodities and the environmental impact to implement e.g. solar and wind farms. In very basic terms the cost-benefit ratio of seeking to implement such technologies has not been adequately addressed.

In terms of how people can manage the current risks of food and energy insecurities, that depends on their individual circumstances. If possible, they should look to stockpile non-perishable foods, grow their own fresh vegetables, utilize alternative off-the-grid energy sources for cooking, heating and lighting. However, this is often not possible due to financial and domestic constraints. What is clear is that we are expressing a global crisis in terms of food and energy security and currently we don’t sense that Western nations are taking this seriously enough. The consequences are potentially catastrophic and not just in terms of the global South. The West is now highly vulnerable to similar shocks and we are simply unprepared, not least in dealing with the societal impact this could and will cause.

Question:  What is the question that you would have liked people to ask you, initially, in the early days, when your message was not taken seriously. And of course, if you can answer that question as well.

Response:  Ironically, this is a question within a question. I was asked back in 2014 what I regarded as my fundamental observation for the next decade. My response was that we should all pay attention to what China and Russia do domestically, bilaterally and internationally. This was greeted with utter disbelief, ridicule and anger. Instead of reacting in such a manner, the next question should have been why I gave such a radical response and what was my reasoning, instead of being summarily dismissed.

If I had been asked why I believed this to be the case I would have explained why the GFC in 2008 was the signal that US hegemony, the US dollar and unipolarity were in rapid and terminal decline. Why – as I stated at the time of the Kiev maidan in 2014 – this was the final nail in the coffin lid of the US hegemony and the USD and Russia would play the long game to see this reach its inevitable conclusion. Why I stated that the major energy deal between China and Russia for the Power of Siberia, signed in 2014, was a major catalyst for the acceleration of the multipolar world and de-dollarisation. Why post GFC 2008, the US burnt its bridges with China by printing trillions of dollars instead of asking China to buy their debt. Why the rollout of the multipolar world was baked in the cake in 2014 and the US weaponization of the dollar would continue to erode global trust in the US and the USD leading to the collapse of unipolarity.

My reasoning was based on an unfolding reality which Westerners have continually, for the last 8 years, failed to see, often because of their arrogance and ignorance. Even now, many still regard the US as the hegemonic power it was in the 1990s and China and Russia as they were in the 1980s economically, societally and military. They also tend to see China and Russia through the eyes of the West, which is a very myopic perspective and makes the assumption that neither nation is capable of offering a better alternative to unipolarity. A failure to grasp these fundamental issues will continue to see Westerners fail to understand the unfolding paradigm shift and therefore to continue to dismiss it as being an irrelevance.

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Thank you Paul! for your time and your complete responses.  But, I feel we’ve hardly touched the subject and this is most probably the one issue we will be talking about far into the future.

We open to the Saker commentariat and if you have a question for Paul, please put that in the comments.  We will choose another five questions and do another interview in written form.  It is now your turn, dear reader.

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The Dollar Devours the Euro

April 08, 2022

By Michael Hudson and posted with the author’s permission

It is now clear that today’s escalation of the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with serious strategy associated with America’s plan to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of blocking Western Europe (“NATO”) from seeking prosperity by mutual trade and investment with China and Russia.

As President Biden and U.S. national-security reports announced, China was seen as the major enemy. Despite China’s helpful role in enabling corporate America to drive down labor’s wage rates by de-industrializing the U.S. economy in favor of Chinese industrialization, China’s growth was recognized as posing the Ultimate Terror: prosperity through socialism. Socialist industrialization always has been perceived to be the great enemy of the rentier economy that has taken over most nations in the century since World War I ended, and especially since the 1980s. The result today is a clash of economic systems – socialist industrialization vs. neoliberal finance capitalism.

That makes the New Cold War against China an implicit opening act of what threatens to be a long-drawn-out World War III. The U.S. strategy is to pry away China’s most likely economic allies, especially Russia, Central Asia, South Asia and East Asia. The question was, where to start the carve-up and isolation.

Russia was seen as presenting the greatest opportunity to begin isolating, both from China and from the NATO Eurozone. A sequence of increasingly severe – and hopefully fatal – sanctions against Russia was drawn up to block NATO from trading with it. All that was needed to ignite the geopolitical earthquake was a casus belli.

That was arranged easily enough. The escalating New Cold War could have been launched in the Near East – over resistance to America’s grabbing of Iraqi oil fields, or against Iran and countries helping it survive economically, or in East Africa. Plans for coups, color revolutions and regime change have been drawn up for all these areas, and America’s African army has been built up especially fast over the past year or two. But Ukraine has been subjected to a U.S.-backed civil war for eight years, since the 2014 Maidan coup, and offered the chance for the greatest first victory in this confrontation against China, Russia and their allies.

So the Russian-speaking Donetsk and Luhansk regions were shelled with increasing intensity, and when Russia still refrained from responding, plans reportedly were drawn up for a great showdown to commence in late February – beginning with a blitzkrieg Western Ukrainian attack organized by U.S. advisors and armed by NATO.

Russia’s preemptive defense of the two Eastern Ukrainian provinces and its subsequent military destruction of the Ukrainian army, navy and air force over the past two months has been used as the excuse to start imposing the U.S.-designed sanctions program that we are seeing unfolding today. Western Europe has dutifully gone along whole-hog. Instead of buying Russian gas, oil and food grains, it will buy these from the United States, along with sharply increased arms imports.

The prospective fall in the Euro/Dollar exchange rate

It therefore is appropriate to look at how this is likely to affect Western Europe’s balance of payments and hence the euro’s exchange rate against the dollar.

European trade and investment prior to the War to Impose Sanctions had promised a rising mutual prosperity between Germany, France and other NATO countries vis-à-vis Russia and China. Russia was providing abundant energy at a competitive price, and this energy was to make a quantum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the foreign exchange to pay for this rising import trade by a combination of exporting more industrial manufactures to Russia and capital investment in developing the Russian economy, e.g. by German auto companies and financial investment. This bilateral trade and investment is now stopped – and will remain stopped for many, many years, given NATO’s confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves kept in euros and British sterling, and the European Russophobia being fanned by U.S. propaganda media.

In its place, NATO countries will purchase U.S. LNG – but they will need to spend billions of dollars building sufficient port capacity, which may take until perhaps 2024. (Good luck until then.) The energy shortage will sharply raise the world price of gas and oil. NATO countries also will step up their purchases of arms from the U.S. military-industrial complex. The near-panic buying will also raise the price for arms. And food prices also will rise as a result of the desperate grain shortfalls resulting from a cessation of imports from Russia and Ukraine on the one hand, and the shortage of ammonia fertilizer made from gas.

All three of these trade dynamics will strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the euro. The question is, how will Europe balance its international payments with the United States? What does it have to export that the U.S. economy will accept as its own protectionist interests gain influence, now that global free trade is dying quickly?

The answer is, not much. So what will Europe do?

I could make a modest proposal. Now that Europe has pretty much ceased to be a politically independent state, it is beginning to look more like Panama and Liberia – “flag of convenience” offshore banking centers that are not real “states” because they don’t issue their own currency, but use the U.S. dollar. Since the eurozone has been created with monetary handcuffs limiting its ability to create money to spend into the economy beyond the limit of 3 percent of GDP, why not simply throw in the financial towel and adopt the U.S. dollar, like Ecuador, Somalia and the Turks and Caicos Islands? That would give foreign investors security against currency depreciation in their rising trade with Europe and its export financing.

For Europe, the alternative is that the dollar-cost of its foreign debt taken on to finance its widening trade deficit with the United States for oil, arms and food will explode. The cost in euros will be even greater as the currency falls against the dollar. Interest rates will rise, slowing investment and making Europe even more dependent on imports. The eurozone will turn into an economic dead zone.

For the United States, this is Dollar Hegemony on steroids – at least vis-à-vis Europe. The continent would become a somewhat larger version of Puerto Rico.

The dollar vis-à-vis Global South currencies

The full-blown version of the New Cold War triggered by the “Ukraine War” risks turning into the opening salvo of World War III, and is likely to last at least a decade, perhaps two, as the U.S. extends the fight between neoliberalism and socialism to encompass a worldwide conflict. Apart from the U.S. economic conquest of Europe, its strategists are seeking to lock in African, South American and Asian countries along similar lines to what has been planned for Europe.

The sharp rise in energy and food prices will hit food-deficit and oil-deficit economies hard – at the same time that their foreign dollar-denominated debts to bondholders and banks are falling due and the dollar’s exchange rate is rising against their own currency. Many African and Latin American countries – especially North Africa – face a choice between going hungry, cutting back their gasoline and electricity use, or borrowing the dollars to cover their dependency on U.S.-shaped trade.

There has been talk of IMF issues of new SDRs to finance the rising trade and payments deficits. But such credit always comes with strings attached. The IMF has its own policy of sanctioning countries that do not obey U.S. policy. The first U.S. demand will be that these countries boycott Russia, China and their emerging trade and currency self-help alliance. “Why should we give you SDRs or extend new dollar loans to you, if you are simply going to spend these in Russia, China and other countries that we have declared to be enemies,” the U.S. officials will ask.

At least, this is the plan. I would not be surprised to see some African country become the “next Ukraine,” with U.S. proxy troops (there are still plenty of Wahabi advocates and mercenaries) fighting against the armies and populations of countries seeking to feed themselves with grain from Russian farms, and power their economies with oil or gas from Russian wells – not to speak of participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative that was, after all, the trigger to America’s launching of its new war for global neoliberal hegemony.

The world economy is being enflamed, and the United States has prepared for a military response and weaponization of its own oil and agricultural export trade, arms trade and demands for countries to choose which side of the New Iron Curtain they wish to join.

But what is in this for Europe? Greek labor unions already are demonstrating against the sanctions being imposed. And in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has just won an election on what is basically an anti-EU and anti-U.S. worldview, starting with paying for Russian gas in roubles. How many other countries will break ranks – and how long will it take?

What is in this for the Global South countries being squeezed – not merely as “collateral damage” to the deep shortages and soaring prices for energy and food, but as the very objective of U.S. strategy as it inaugurates the great splitting of the world economy in two? India has already told U.S. diplomats that its economy is naturally connected with those of Russia and China. Pakistan finds the same calculus at work.

From the U.S. vantage point, all that needs to be answered is, “What’s in it for the local politicians and client oligarchies that we reward for delivering their countries?”

From its planning stages, U.S. diplomatic strategists viewed the looming World War III as a war of economic systems. What side will countries choose: their own economic interest and social cohesion, or submission to local political leaders installed by U.S. meddling like the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland bragged of having invested in Ukraine’s neo-Nazi parties eight years ago to initiate the fighting that has erupted into today’s war?

In the face of all this political meddling and media propaganda, how long will it take the rest of the world to realize that there’s a global war underway, with World War III on the horizon? The real problem is that by the time the world understands what is going on, the global fracture will already have enabled Russia, China and Eurasia to create a real non-neoliberal New World Order that does not need NATO countries and which has lost trust and hope for mutual economic gains with them. The military battlefield will be littered with economic corpses.

Just a handful, not relevant, yet…

March 27, 2022

Source

By Nat South

There are some comments made on social media, to whitewash and downplay the serious issue regarding a far-right/ ultranationalist movement in Ukraine. Such simplistic takes are seen as a sound reason for denying a Russian military intervention* in Ukraine. This article provides some responses to these, by using a combination of corporate MSM and Ukrainian information to address the points made about a handful of far-right groups and individuals and their influence.

1. How many deputies does Right Sector or other ultranationalists have in the Ukrainian Rada?

Remarkably, people use this stance over and over on social media and in the press to justify that there is no ultranationalism problem in Ukraine. To them, support & evidence and ultra-nationalism ought to translate into votes and winning seats in the Ukrainian parliament. If only it were as simple it is seems. It goes much much deeper, and the roots are deeply established.

The focus isn’t that there are just a few ultra-nationalists that were elected to politics recently, but how since 2014 ultra-nationalists were a vector for unsettling changes in socio-political structures and provided cover for wider acceptance of an overtly fascist ethno- nationalism within Ukrainian institutions, namely in education and in the military.

Roll back a few years, there were plenty that used their status as a volunteer fighter in Donbass (known as the Anti-Terrorism Operation — ATO) to get elected back in 2014. Practically all of them lost in the 2019 parliamentary elections. This is the crucial aspect to carefully note. The background to the 2019 parliamentary elections was when Zelensky had been elected as president on a platform to bring peace to the country.

Here are some examples of the Donbass ATO unit members who become deputies:

• Ex-commander Azov battalion: Andriy Biletsky (ex Verkhovna Rada deputy 2014- 2019), founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Assembly;
• Ex-commander Aidar battalion: Sergei Melnichuk (Ex-Rada deputy 2014-2019);
• Ex- company commander, Aidar: Ihor Lapin (Ex- Rada deputy 2014-2019);
• Ex- Dnipro Battalion commander: Yuriy Bereza
• Ex-Aidar volunteer, helicopter pilot, Nadiya Savchenko — Ex-Rada deputy (2014-2018)
• Ex-commander of Donbass battalion: Konstantin Grishin, former Rada deputy, (Self-Help party), alias – Semyon Semenchenko.

Only of one of the above was elected and represented a radical right party, the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko, all of the others stood for mainstream political parties. Notably, the leader of the Radical Party (RP) Oleh Lyashko did admit that members of his party murdered anti-Maidan leaders during the ‘revolution of dignity’ and extrajudicial murders of non-combatants in Torez in 2014.

Yet, all of the above Rada Deputies served in far right / ultranationalist volunteer units. The very same nationalist units cited on multiple occasions in human right reports for “credible allegations of torture and other egregious abuses”  + incommunicado detention & violence against civilians . Additionally, there are many others who fought in Donbass and also became Rada deputies.

Moreover, many of the far-right fringe groups successfully stood for election in 2014, reflecting a change in perception. However, 5 years later, the reality of what the ultra-nationalists brought with them, (regular threats, conflict, language & cultural restrictions, corruption, crime) was no longer acceptable to the majority of ordinary voters.

“The election result was the one-party majority, a novelty in Ukraine, for President Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party with 254 seats.” Wikipedia. This is the crux of the matter, people wanted a change, people just did not want to vote for the ultranationalists parties and their policies. The likes of Svoboda, led by Oleh Tyahnybok did get 2.15% and just the one seat in the Verkhovna Rada. Even Oleh Lyashko lost his seat in 2019.

During the last 8 years, a number of prominent ultra-nationalist groups have made their mark on Ukrainian society. The notorious Azov’s political wing, the National Corps headed by none other than the ex-Azov commander, Andrei Biletskiy, as well as Right Sector, and its armed Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (DUK) and UVA, along with Svoboda linked groups, (key Maidan participants), have been consistently and fiercely opposed to any sort of a peace settlement in Donbass.

Similarly, the ex-Rada deputies, who participated in the Donbass ATO, other ultra-nationalists, have to date, largely enjoyed judicial impunity in the wake of committing crimes, given their official status and connections to military and nationalist units. Some examples of this are provided later in the article.

Electorally, the ultranationalist parties may not be popular and get parliamentary seats, due to a wish for a change in politics, namely a peace settlement in Donbass, but also due to the various fractions, frictions and bickering between ultranationalists groups. Obtaining a peace settlement was one of the main electoral promises made by Zelensky in 2019. Hence, the overwhelming election of Zelensky, across the board, with 73% of the votes, apparently due to widespread disenchantment with Petro Poroshenko’s policies.

Ever since the events in Maidan back in 2014, ultra-nationalists have latched themselves in various sectors, local politics, police, the security service (SBU) and military structures. There are numerous examples of this over this 8-year period, too many to cite here, but just a couple examples provided to underscore the extent of the power and influence of ultra-nationalists in Ukraine, as well as highlight the cooperation between official bodies and far-right groups and outline some of the ties that ultra-nationalists have.

A suspect in the 2015 murder of the journalist Oles’ Buzina, an ultranationalist, ex-ATO volunteer (Kyiv-2), Andrey Medvedko, (ex-Svoboda Party, ex C-14) was voted in 2019 to the public council of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). Medvedko was never put on trial.

Avowed neo-nazi, Azov deputy commander, Vadim Troyan, was appointed in 2014 by the Interior minister (MVD), Arsen Avakov, as police chief for Kyiv Oblast & later in 2016, promoted to 1st deputy chief of the new National Police.

It is the same MVD minister, Avakov, who helped to create the ATO volunteer battalions in 2014, but also backed Azov as well, and then integrated Azov into the National Guard structure. This is the same Interior minister who said in 2014, “to promise the Russians anything, and then hang them after the victory”.

In 2018, C-14 was used as a vigilante group, signed a partnership with a local Kyiv Council and also the police to carry out patrols. This is the same group that got sponsorship from the Ministry of Youth & Sports, “under less $17,000 for a children’s camp.” The same C-14 that carried out pogroms against Roma. The C-14 leader, Yevhen Yaras openly acknowledged working with the Ukrainian security service, (SBU).

Just when things couldn’t actually deteriorate regarding deeply unsavoury shenanigans at the highest levels, Zelensky appointed Oleksandr Poklad as the SBU’s counter-intelligence chief in 2021. Poklad known as the ‘The Strangler’ is a decidedly shady character, typical of the post-Maidan scene, with links to organised crimes and involvement in extrajudicial killings.

March 2022, some everyday examples of ultra-nationalists in power, as mayors of Ivano-Frankivsk, Konotop (article) or the city council of Ternopil with their huge banner of Bandera. In fact, they don’t hide the fact that they revere Bandera and his ideology, (more on this in the 2nd part of this article).

Over just half of all the funds allocated by the Ukrainian government for children’s and youth organisations in 2020 went to various ultra-nationalist projects. All done primarily to foster and increase an already existing popularity for Bandera.

Now replicate these examples a thousand times over, across Ukraine over eight years to get a sense of the tip of the ultra-nationalist iceberg. More examples are also provided later in the article.

Back in 2019, Zelensky tried to advocate for peace, but ended up appeasing the ultra-nationalists and of late, progressively established himself more and more with individuals and groups, from those very same radical ultra nationalist / extremists entities.

Ex-president Petro Poroshenko, likewise has used the nationalist leaders and groups during the 1st December 2021 demonstrations against Zelensky. Basically, a rent-a-mob those various political entities use to their advantage. This exchange of mindsets isn’t surprising, given that Andriy Parubiy, [1] , the co-founder of Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, was the on the party list for Poroshenko’s “European Solidarity Party”. An example of an ultra-nationalist gaining some traction by extending into the ‘conventional’ political system.

Although the ultra-nationalists as political parties are on the margins, they still have significant socio-political influence wider in society. For instance, the parades and massive torchlight rallies in Ukraine by various ultra-nationalists, approved by local authorities and local enforcement, reminiscent of the 1930’s torchlight processions. Paradoxically, the Western press expressed anguish and anger when such a torchlight march took place in in Charlottesville, USA, the one. But in Ukraine, nothing of the sort is expressed by Western corporate MSM on the numerous marches in various Ukrainian cities.

Additionally, although Zelensky initially make some tentative steps to try and get a peace settlement back in autumn 2019, this was totally scuppered by the threats made by ultra-nationalists, who forcefully asserted their “No Capitulation” campaign. Other high-profile Ukrainian politicians “drew red lines that Zelensky should not cross during the Normandy Format meeting”.

Moreover, no concerted attempts were made by Brussels, Washington or the OSCE to effectively pressurise Zelensky to cut loose from using ultra-nationalist units in the military, (first and foremost: Azov), nor were any efforts made to assist Zelensky in removing the ultra-nationalists out of official or elected positions.

2. There are just a handful of neo-Nazis / ultra-nationalists / extremists. Or, they’re only 0,005% of the military.

By solely mentioning ‘Azov’ as being teeming with Neo-Nazis, alleging that there are only about 900 to 1500 members, thus stating that is it a relatively small proportion compared to the total Ukrainian armed forces. Thus, the Neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists is correspondingly insignificant. As if that was okay to start with.

“Ah but there are neo-Nazis in most militaries…” This type of comment misses the point completely. Only Ukraine has tolerated whole units with Neo-Nazis or supporters of Bandera and allowed units to have fascist-inspired insignia and flags. Only in Ukraine, is overt Neo-Nazi ideology permitted in the ranks. For the sake of fighting the ‘Muscovites’.

Yet, just Azov accounts for more than 1500 volunteers, up to double or triple that numbers, given the other battalions, as well as 2 regiments and other units across Ukraine. Add in the Right Sector’s units, conservatively estimated at around 10,000 volunteers. Not included are also other ultra-nationalist military units, Aidar, Donbass, nor the special police battalions, including Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kyiv-1, Kyiv-2 and a dozen other units. Then there are others such as the Carpathian Sich, OUN volunteers and foreign volunteer units. Their odious ideology and zeal is matched with their outright hatred for Russians. Some ultra-nationalists love to wear the Totenkopf, a symbol by the SS stormtroopers, who considered themselves to be the elite. These ultra-nationalists are currently the spearhead in fighting Russian forces across Ukraine.

Recently, the French President, Emmanuel Macron claimed that Russia’s special operation to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” Ukraine is “not a fight against Nazism”. A prime example of the denial or attempt to ignore some deeply serious issues that are being constantly overlooked by Western politicians and MSM. Evidently, he never got to read The Atlantic Council’s 2018 article Ukraine’s far-right problems or browsed through this photo essay.

The concept of ‘de-nazifying’ is probably totally lost on most people in the West. What should have been added was a reference to reclaiming nazi-era ideology and glorifying nationally a nazi-inspired supremacist. Even Zelensky stated categorically that “this is a normal and cool thing.” Why would he need to say such things if it wasn’t to placate and please a certain part of Ukrainian society?

“There are indisputable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing. He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine.” Zelensky

(2019)

Ethno-ultra-nationalism in Ukraine has different strands, but all converge on reclaiming the ideology espoused by Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Partisan Army (UPA) and their activities in the 1940’s. Right Sector, OUN, C-14, National Corps foster and practice a cult principally centred on Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, (See the photo below — Bandera Readings 2022, for an example). The government is no exception either, along with the Rada as well in promoting, nurturing these WWII fascist leaders, in order to establish them as part of Ukrainian culture. Bandera has been officially recognised as a national hero since 2010. Maidan was the catalyst in accelerating this process, more violently, more brutally on one hand and more insidiously by officials in education, culture and the military. Violent far right units that got patronage from Washington and Brussels.

As the C-14 leader, Yevhen Yaras stated back in February, it is not a question of numbers per se, but actual influence and capability to mobilise people and resources. This was the vividly the case in Maidan, (as reported in a BBC documentary), and as he clearly said in his talk, and it is still certainly the case nowadays.

A clear example of this influence happened in December 2021, when Zelensky appointed the Right Sector founder, Dmitro Yarosh, as advisor to the chief of the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces. More recently, in March 2022, Zelensky appointed the ex-Aidar commander, Maksym Marchenko, as the new head of the Odessa Administration.

Ultra-nationalists have been unable to regain a political foothold via the political parties, yet this doesn’t stop them from asserting their presence in society in general:

• marches & demonstrations; (15,000 Ukraine nationalists march for divisive Bandera — USA Today)
• disrupting council meetings & court proceedings; (BBC documentary 2018)
• pogroms against Roma (Kyiv, Lviv);
• attacked other protests & events (LGBT, environmentalists, International women’ s day marchers) as reported by HRW;
• intimidation, blackmail and murders of opponents.

Their deeply unsavoury activities did raise alarm by human right and civic groups back in 2018. The concerns were about how the far right “created an atmosphere of near total impunity that cannot but embolden these groups to commit more attacks“. This deplorable situation has never been dealt with by authorities. Fast-forward five years, the reluctance was still there to even start tackling part of the problem. Rather than being seen as a liability, their presence is seen in some quarters as a necessary obligation.

Thus, the ultra-nationalists gained a firmer foothold, by the fact that they were the ones who went to the ATO, the ones willing to continue fighting in Donbass. Add in a perpetual fear that these groups could turn against the government or officials, as recently evidenced by the 1st of December 2021 protests, no official is willing to confront them. This shows the extent of the influence and power that they can wield. For instance, Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of Right Sector publicly threatened Zelensky in an interview that he would hang from a tree.

Since 2018, a continuous effort has been made to legitimise Ukraine’s extremists, (i.e. 2018 — National Militia cooperation with the police, during the 2019 election). Even though, groups linked to Azov, and both military wings of Right Sector are in fact illegal military groups, not officially part of the military or National Guard structure, it is telling how they are seen and valued at the highest levels of government.

1st December 2021 saw Zelenskiy in the Verkhovna Rada, giving the country’s highest state award, “Hero of Ukraine”, to the Right Sector unit commander, Dmitro Kotsyubailo. The unit is part of the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps (DUK), a stand-alone irregular military unit, part of Right Sector.

A reminder to the readers that Right Sector units are predominantly manned by ultra-nationalists and neo-nazis. An example is Dmitro Kotsyubailo himself as one of thousands of examples, (centre photo with statue of Bandera and Right Sector flags):

Dmitro Kotsyubailo’s unit has been given anti-tank missile systems. Likewise, an Azov unit in Kharkiv got given the same systems, as this tweet shows:

As I said earlier, here are the ultra-nationalist units that get fast tracked training & access to NATO weaponry, as part of a total of $2.5 billion given by the U.S. alone to Ukraine. This isn’t indicative of a tolerance by Kyiv, but tacit acceptance of these units as well as the ideological stance that they have. Not only Kyiv, but Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels. A modern-day revamping of Op Gladio style units to fight the Russian military now and Donbass units since 2014.

A broader perspective can be glimpse through these selected headlines:

• For Ukraine’s Far Right, War With Russia Can Be an Opportunity (Haaretz 2022)
• Preparing for War With Ukraine’s Fascist Defenders of Freedom (Foreign Policy 2014)
• A Year After 1/6, Ukraine’s War Draws U.S. Far-Right to Fight Russia, Train for Violence at Home (Newsweek 2022)

Western politicians, corporate media, think tanks experts are blatantly ignoring these deeply unpleasant aspects in Ukraine. However, given the widely circulated MSM articles that flagged up the far-right in Ukraine, most media outlets and journalists are willingly glossing over these aspects as well as the accompanying violence and brutality against civilians for daring to oppose this Ukrainian ideology. All in the pursuit of fighting the Russian military.

It is fair to say that overtly fascist elements provide a stream of volunteers for Azov, Right Sector, C-14, OUN, National Corps, and others, whose members have been integrated into the military, National Guard, police, security services & also in mainstream political parties. Paradoxically, the Russian intervention has provided a catalyst for the growth in Ukrainian ultra-nationalist military units.

Conclusion

Blindsided by citing simplistic comments, those who do not wish to look any further, as such, for them, there are just a handful of weak ultranationalists. Case closed, conveniently so for them. Yet, the disturbing reality shows the opposite and this article only attempted to provide a brief insight. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists certainly pack a punch above their weight.

Both the U.S and Europe only understand to some extent the considerable danger represented by violent extremism when is present in their countries. Yet, they shut their eyes to very same danger, amplified by a conflict, fostered with the connivance of authorities.

Footnotes

* to use a standard U.S. and NATO MSM/military terminology.

[1] which became the political party ‘Svoboda’. He was also the leading hand of Euromaidan “Self-Defense” fighters and activists.

ما الخطة العسكريّة الروسيّة التي اعتمدت في أوكرانيا… ونتائجها؟

 العميد د. أمين محمد حطيط ^_

خطّطت أميركا وخلفها الغرب الأوروبي لاستدراج روسيا الى أوكرانيا وإغراقها في مستنقع لا تستطيع الخروج منه أو لا تخرج منه إلا بعد إنهاكها والقضاء على اقتصادها لا بل والنيل من وحدتها وتفكيكها الى دول متناحرة تضيع بين حدودها المكانة النووية استراتيجياً وتفقد حق الفيتو في مجلس الأمن دولياً وهما الميزتان اللتان كانتا للاتحاد السوفياتي وورثتهما روسيا بعد تفككه، واليوم تريد أميركا شطبهما من الكينونة الروسية بشكل نهائي. كلّ ذلك تقدم عليه أميركا من أجل إسقاط المثلث الاستراتيجي المشرقيّ الذي يرفض ويعمل من أجل الإجهاز النهائي على فكرة الأحادية القطبية التي حلمت بها أميركا وخاضت من أجل إرسائها الحروب المتتالية والمتنوّعة، فكرة لا تزال تدغدغ أحلامها رغم ما واجهته من عوائق وما مُنيت صاحبتها من هزائم.

وحتى تنفذ خطتها لجأت أميركا الى تدابير استفزازية دفعت اليها أوكرانيا الدولة الجار لروسيا ذات الـ ٤٥ مليون نسمة (ما يعادل ربع سكان روسيا) وذات المساحة التي تتجاوز الـ 600 الف كلم2، ومنذ العام 2014 بدأت أميركا بخطتها الجهنمية ضدّ روسيا بالانقلاب الذي أطاح بحكومة أوكرانية وطنية تقيم علاقات حسن جوار طبيعية مع روسيا، انقلاب جاء الى الحكم بدمية بيد الغرب وفئة من القوميين والنازيين الجدد المعبّأين بعميق الكراهية ضدّ روسيا، ما فرض على روسيا اتخاذ الوضع الدفاعي عن مصالحها ومستقبلها والأهم حاضراً عن أمنها القومي وأمن الأشخاص الروس او الذين هم من أصل روسي ويقيمون في أوكرانيا بصفتهم مواطنين بعد ان ضمتّ القيادة السوفياتية السابقة ارضاً روسية الى أوكرانيا لتشكل منها دولة في الاتحاد السوفياتي احتفظت بالأرض الروسية بعد تفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي.

حاولت روسيا جاهدة التفلت مما ينصب لها في أوكرانيا من كمائن او فخاخ، وعرضت بأكثر من طريقة ووسيلة وأسلوب حلولاً لما تخشاه خاصة على صعيد الأمن القومي وامن الأشخاص الروس، وكان الرفض الأميركي بصلافة وتعنّت هو الردّ دائماً وكان هذا طبيعياً من أميركا التي تخطط بالشكل الجهنّمي ضدّ روسيا، ووصلت الأمور في نهاية المطاف الى وضع روسيا أمام خيارين: اما السكوت على الاستفزاز وتآكل الموقع والقدرات والوصول الى يوم لن يكون بعيداً تضطر فيه للدفاع عن الدولة على أبواب موسكو وتتذكر يومها الغزو الغربي لها أكثر من مرة وما خلفه من قتل ودمار، او المبادرة بعمل عسكري استباقي ووقائي يقيها من هذه الأخطار دون أن تدخل النار أرض الدولة الروسية. بين الأمرين اختارت الحلّ الثاني رغم ما فيه، من مخاطر وما ينطوي عليه من الوقوع في الفخ الأميركي، ويحقق رغبة أميركا في اقتياد روسيا الى حرب استنزاف قاتلة،

بيد انّ روسيا ومع اختيارها للعمل العسكري النوعي الاستباقي، الذي اضطرت عليه كخيار بين السيّئ والأسوأ. واختارت السيّئ، بادرت الى وضع خطط تنفيذية تجنبها قدر الإمكان او الى الحدّ الأقصى الانزلاق الى حرب استنزاف أو عمليات قتل المدنيين كما تشتهي أميركا ومن أجل ذلك اختارت للتنفيذ استراتيجية الضغط المتدرّج الذي أملت منها حمل القيادة الأوكرانية على التفاوض تحت وطأة الميدان والضغط العسكري فيه من أجل الاستجابة للمطالب الروسية ذات الصلة بالأمن القومي الروسي وأمن الأشخاص الروس.

وفي التنفيذ ترجمت هذه الاستراتيجية عسكرياً بما يؤدي الى تدمير القدرات العسكرية الأوكرانية وتجفيف مصادر القوة، ونزع الانياب والأظافر وحرمان أوكرانيا من الإمكانات العسكرية الذاتية او التي تمنح لها من الخارج لتتمكن من إدارة حرب استنزاف ناجحة وطويلة الأمد تحقق لأميركا اهدافها. ومن أجل ذلك التزمت ونفذت روسيا ميدانياً بما يلي:

ـ الاقتصاد بالقوى مع تخصيص جزء بسيط من قواتها المسلحة وقواتها العسكرية وإناطة مهمة العملية العسكرية النوعية به، ولذلك لم تزجّ في الميدان وتدفع عبر الحدود أكثر من ١/١٣ من قواتها المقاتلة وهي نسبة متدنية جداً كما يعلم العسكريون لا يكون من شأنها ان ترهق الجيش مهما طال أمد العمليات.

ـ التخطيط للحرب الطويلة غير المرهقة حتى لا يكون طول المدة أداة ضغط عكسية على روسيا.

ـ التوجه لتدمير القدرات العسكرية الأوكرانية شاملاً الأسلحة والذخائر في الميدان وفي المستودعات وفي مصانع الإنتاج بما يحرم الجيش الأوكراني من الوسائل العسكرية المحلية التي تلزمه للقتال والمواجهة والصمود.

ـ اعتماد استراتيجية الحصار  للإنهاك النفسي والميداني الذي يفرغ المدن من سكانها ما يقود الى إسقاطها في نهاية المطاف مع تجنب حرب الشوارع ومعارك الالتحام وخسائرها او قتل المدنيين في بيوتهم، وفي هذه النقطة قلبت روسيا الاتجاه حيث تجنّبت حرب الاستنزاف ودفعت الخصم اليها وهو برأينا إبداع روسي.

ـ الاندفاع البدئيّ السريع للعملية عبر الحدود مع تعدّد محاور العمل (٣ محاور رئيسية ومحورين ثانويين) بما يحقق الصدمة والرعب ويقود الى الانهيار الإدراكي والإخراج من الميدان دون قتال لأنّ هدف روسيا لم يكن القتل بل التحييد عن القتال،

ـ رسم الخطوط الحمراء الصارمة بوجه التدخل الغربي الأطلسي وتجلى ذلك بـ ٣ مواقف الأول التلويح بالسلاح النووي الرادع، والثاني اعتبار قوافل الإمداد العسكري أهدافاً  مشروعة أينما كانت، والثالث اعتبار فتح مراكز التدريب والتحشيد وتجنيد الأجانب عملاً يستوجب التدخل لتدميرها.

ـ الارتقاء التصاعدي في استعمال الاسلحة بشكل يحقق مصالح روسية مركبة من عملانية ولوجستية واستراتيجية مع التقيّد بقاعدة “التناسب والضرورة” حسب المستطاع والحاجة والإمكان، ومن هنا نفهم كيف لجأت روسيا الى استعمال صاروخ “كنجال” ذي الرأس عالي الدقة والخارق للتحصينات من أجل تدمير مستودعات الأسلحة والذخائر، او إطلاق صاروخ باستون من قطعة بحرية في البحر الأسود ليدمّر أهدافاً في البر الأوكراني رغم أنه في الاصل معدّ للاستعمال ضدّ السفن، ففي هذه النقطة يبدو انّ روسيا تتجه الى عرض واستعراض القوة والقدرات العسكرية العالية المستوى وتأكيد قرارها الاستراتيجي بالمضيّ حتى النهاية لتحقيق أهدافها مهما استلزم ذلك من بذل.

ـ الإمساك بورقة المصانع البيولوجية والجرثومية التي أقامتها أميركا في أوكرانيا والتلويح بفضح الخطط الأميركية بصددها.

وبالنتيجة وفي اقلّ من شهر تمكنت روسيا من تحييد اكثر من ٧٥٪ من الجيش الأوكراني وفرض الحصار على ٣ مدن رئيسية منها العاصمة كييف كما وإحكام حصار بحري كامل على أوكرانيا فحرمتها من التجارة عبر البحرين الأسود وآزوف، كما أنها دمّرت المصانع العسكرية في معظم أوكرانيا ووضعت اليد على قاعدتين نوويتين أساسيتين في تشيرنوبيل وزاباروجيا متجنبة الى الحدّ الأقصى المواجهات الميدانية المباشرة ومعتمدة بشكل رئيسي على القدرات النارية براً وجواً وبحراً وعلى قدرات الصدم المناسبة.

وعلى هذا الأساس نستطيع القول من الوجهة العسكرية إنّ روسيا التي تعمل مع هوامش أمان كثيرة بعيداً عن ضغط الوقت، تجنّبت حرب الاستنزاف لا بل دفعت الخصم اليها وصاغت أسس معركتها بشكل يمكنها من تحقيق أهدافها بشكل مؤكد ما يعني أنّ أوكرانيا ستكون ميدان فشل إضافي للسياسة الأميركية التي حصدت فشلاً مركباً والأخطر فيه هو الفشل الاستراتيجي المتمثل بسقوط نهائي للأحادية القطبية.

أستاذ جامعي ـ باحث استراتيجي

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Make Nazism Great Again

March 24, 2022

By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

The supreme target is regime change in Russia, Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.

All eyes are on Mariupol. As of Wednesday night, over 70% of residential areas were under control of Donetsk and Russian forces, while Russian Marines, Donetsk’s 107^th batallion and Chechen Spetsnaz, led by the charismatic Adam Delimkhanov, had entered the Azov-Stal plant – the HQ of the neo-Nazi Azov batallion.

Azov was sent a last ultimatum: surrender until midnight – or else, as in a take no prisoners highway to hell.

That implies a major game-changer in the Ukrainian battlefield; Mariupol is finally about to be thoroughly denazified – as the Azov contingent long entrenched in the city and using civilians as human shields were their most hardened fighting force.

Meanwhile, echoes from the Empire of Lies all but gave the whole game away. There’s no intention whatsoever in Washington to facilitate a peace plan in Ukraine – and that explains Comedian Zelensky’s non-stop stalling tactics. The supreme target is regime change in Russia, and for that Totalen Krieg against Russia and all things Russian is warranted. Ukraine is just a pawn in the game – or worse, mere cannon fodder.

This also means that the 14,000 deaths in Donbass for the past 8 years should be directly attributed to the Exceptionalists. As for Ukrainian neo-Nazis of all stripes, they are as expendable as “moderate rebels” in Syria, be they al-Qaeda or Daesh-linked. Those that may eventually survive can always join the budding CIA-sponsored Neo-Nazi Inc. – the tawdry remix of the 1980s Jihad Inc. in Afghanistan. They will be properly “Kalibrated”.

A quick neo-Nazi recap

By now only the brain dead across NATOstan – and there are hordes – are not aware of Maidan in 2014. Yet few know that it was then Ukrainian Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov, a former governor of Kharkov, who gave the green light for a 12,000 paramilitary outfit to materialize out of Sect 82 soccer hooligans who supported Dynamo Kiev. That was the birth of the Azov batallion, in May 2014, led by Andriy Biletsky, a.k.a. the White Fuhrer, and former leader of the neo-nazi gang Patriots of Ukraine.

Together with NATO stay-behind agent Dmitro Yarosh, Biletsky founded Pravy Sektor, financed by Ukrainian mafia godfather and Jewish billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky (later the benefactor of the meta-conversion of Zelensky from mediocre comedian to mediocre President.)

Pravy Sektor happened to be rabidly anti-EU – tell that to Ursula von der Lugen – and politically obsessed with linking Central Europe and the Baltics in a new, tawdry Intermarium. Crucially, Pravy Sektor and other nazi gangs were duly trained by NATO instructors.

Biletsky and Yarosh are of course disciples of notorious WWII-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, for whom pure Ukrainians are proto-Germanic or Scandinavian, and Slavs are untermenschen.

Azov ended up absorbing nearly all neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine and were dispatched to fight against Donbass – with their acolytes making more money than regular soldiers. Biletsky and another neo-Nazi leader, Oleh Petrenko, were elected to the Rada. The White Führer stood on his own. Petrenko decided to support then President Poroshenko. Soon the Azov battalion was incorporated as the Azov Regiment to the Ukrainian National Guard.

They went on a foreign mercenary recruiting drive – with people coming from Western Europe, Scandinavia and even South America.

That was strictly forbidden by the Minsk Agreements guaranteed by France and Germany (and now de facto defunct). Azov set up training camps for teenagers and soon reached 10,000 members. Erik “Blackwater” Prince, in 2020, struck a deal with the Ukrainian military that would enable his renamed outfit, Academi, to supervise Azov.

It was none other than sinister Maidan cookie distributor Vicky “F**k the EU” Nuland who suggested to Zelensky – both of them, by the way, Ukrainian Jews – to appoint avowed Nazi Yarosh as an adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi. The target: organize a blitzkrieg on Donbass and Crimea – the same blitzkrieg that SVR, Russian foreign intel, concluded would be launched on February 22, thus propelling the launch of Operation Z.

All of the above, in fact just a quick recap, shows that in Ukraine there’s no difference whatsoever between white neo-Nazis and brown-colored al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh, as much as neo-Nazis are just as “Christian” as takfiri Salafi-jihadis are “Muslim”.

When Putin denounced a “bunch of neo-Nazis” in power in Kiev, the Comedian replied that it was impossible because he was Jewish. Nonsense. Zelensky and his patron Kolomoysky, for all practical purposes, are Zio-Nazis.

Even as branches of the United States government admitted to neo-Nazis entrenched in the Kiev apparatus, the Exceptionalist machine made the daily shelling of Donbass for 8 years simply disappear. These thousands of civilian victims never existed.

U.S. mainstream media even ventured the odd piece or report on Azov and Aidar neo-Nazis. But then a neo-Orwellian narrative was set in stone: there are no Nazis in Ukraine. CIA offshoot NED even started deleting records about training members of Aidar. Recently a crappy news network duly promoted a video of a NATO-trained and weaponized Azov commander – complete with Nazi iconography.

Why “denazification” makes sense

The Banderastan ideology harks back to when this part of Ukraine was in fact controlled by the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Russian empire and Poland. Stepan Bandera was born in Austro-Hungary in 1909, near Ivano-Frankovsk, in the – then autonomous – Kingdom of Galicia.

WWI dismembered European empires into frequently non-viable small entities. In western Ukraine – an imperial intersection – that inevitably led to the proliferation of extremely intolerant ideologies.

Banderastan ideologues profited from the Nazi arrival in 1941 to try to proclaim an independent territory. But Berlin not only blocked it but sent them to concentration camps. In 1944 though the Nazis changed tactics: they liberated the Banderanistas and manipulated them into anti-Russian hate, thus creating a destabilization force in the Ukrainian USSR.

So Nazism is not exactly the same as Banderastan fanatics: they are in fact competing ideologies. What happened since Maidan is that the CIA kept a laser focus on inciting Russian hatred by whatever fringe groups it could instrumentalize. So Ukraine is not a case of “white nationalism” – to put it mildly – but of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism, for all practical purposes manifested via Nazi-style salutes and Nazi-style symbols.

So when Putin and the Russian leadership refer to Ukrainian Nazism, that may not be 100% correct, conceptually, but it strikes a chord with every Russian.

Russians viscerally reject Nazism – considering that virtually every Russian family has at least one ancestor killed during the Great Patriotic War. From the perspective of wartime psychology, it makes total sense to talk of “Ukro-nazism” or, straight to the point, a “denazification” campaign.

How the Anglos loved the Nazis

The United States government openly cheerleading neo-Nazis in Ukraine is hardly a novelty, considering how it supported Hitler alongside England in 1933 for balance of power reasons.

In 1933, Roosevelt lent Hitler one billion gold dollars while England lent him two billion gold dollars. That should be multiplied 200 times to arrive at today’s fiat dollars. The Anglo-Americans wanted to build up Germany as a bulwark against Russia. In 1941 Roosevelt wrote to Hitler that if he invaded Russia the U.S. would side with Russia, and wrote Stalin that if Stalin invaded Germany the U.S. would back Germany. Talk about a graphic illustration of Mackinderesque balance of power.

The Brits had become very concerned with the rise of Russian power under Stalin while observing that Germany was on its knees with 50% unemployment in 1933, if one counted unregistered itinerant Germans.

Even Lloyd George had misgivings about the Versailles Treaty, unbearably weakening Germany after its surrender in WWI. The purpose of WWI, in Lloyd George’s worldview, was to destroy Russia and Germany together. Germany was threatening England with the Kaiser building a fleet to take over the oceans, while the Tsar was too close to India for comfort. For a while Britannia won – and continued to rule the waves.

Then building up Germany to fight Russia became the number one priority – complete with rewriting of History. The uniting of Austrian Germans and Sudetenland Germans with Germany, for instance, was totally approved by the Brits.

But then came the Polish problem. When Germany invaded Poland, France and Britain stood on the sidelines. That placed Germany on the border of Russia, and Germany and Russia divided up Poland. That’s exactly what Britain and France wanted. Britain and France had promised Poland that they would invade Germany from the west while Poland fought Germany from the east.

In the end, the Poles were double-crossed. Churchill even praised Russia for invading Poland. Hitler was advised by MI6 that England and France would not invade Poland – as part of their plan for a German-Russian war. Hitler had been supported financially since the 1920s by MI6 for his favorable words about England in Mein Kampf. MI6 de facto encouraged Hitler to invade Russia.

Fast forward to 2022, and here we go again – as farce, with the Anglo-Americans “encouraging” Germany under feeble Scholz to put itself back together militarily, with 100 billion euros (that the Germans don’t have), and setting up in thesis a revamped European force to later go to war against Russia.

Cue to the Russophobic hysteria in Anglo-American media about the Russia-China strategic partnership. The mortal Anglo-American fear is Mackinder/Mahan/Spykman/Kissinger/Brzezinski all rolled into one: Russia-China as peer competitor twins take over the Eurasian land mass – the Belt and Road Initiative meets the Greater Eurasia Partnership – and thus rule the planet, with the U.S. relegated to inconsequential island status, as much as the previous “Rule Britannia”.

England, France and later the Americans had prevented it when Germany aspired to do the same, controlling Eurasia side by side with Japan, from the English Channel to the Pacific. Now it’s a completely different ball game.

So Ukraine, with its pathetic neo-Nazi gangs, is just an – expendable – pawn in the desperate drive to stop something that is beyond anathema, from Washington’s perspective: a totally peaceful German-Russian-Chinese New Silk Road.

Russophobia, massively imprinted in the West’s DNA, never really went away. Cultivated by the Brits since Catherine the Great – and then with The Great Game. By the French since Napoleon. By the Germans because the Red Army liberated Berlin. By the Americans because Stalin forced to them the mapping of Europe – and then it went on and on and on throughout the Cold War.

We are at just the early stages of the final push by the dying Empire to attempt arresting the flow of History. They are being outsmarted, they are already outgunned by the top military power in the world, and they will be checkmated. Existentially, they are not equipped to kill the Bear – and that hurts. Cosmically.

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Pepe on Telegram:  https://t.me/+Uxbn8mAJx2971eDI

دولة الاحتلال وحركات المقاومة في ظل الهزّة الأوكرانية.. تقدير موقف

الخميس، 24 مارس 2022

تدور الحرب في أوكرانيا كما بات واضحًا بين معسكرين، أحدهما روسيٌ مدعوم صينيًا بشكلٍ أساسيٍ، وبدعمٍ غير مباشرٍ من دولٍ أخرى تسعى لكسر الهيمنة الأمريكية والأحادية القطبية. وفي المقابل، معسكرٌ غربيٌ بقيادة الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية، مع بعض الدول التي تخضع كليًا للنفوذ الأمريكي كاليابان مثلًا، لكن في وضع حلفاء أمريكا تفصيلٌ على ما سيأتي لاحقًا.

ويمكن قراءة أهداف كل معسكرٍ على النحو الآتي:

ـ تسعى روسيا بدايةً إلى هدفٍ مباشرٍ يتمثل في تحييد الخطر الأوكراني،الذي باتت تُشكِّله أوكرانيا عليها بعد أحداث “الثورة الملونة” في 2014، التي تم هندستها أمريكيًا، والتي أفضت إلى تنصيب نظامٍ عميلٍ للغرب، حيث باشر هذا النظام بدعمٍ وتوجيهٍ أمريكيين مساعي الانضمام لحلف شمال الأطلسي بصورة فعلية، في خطوةٍ تصب في مصلحة الأمريكي، لكنها تتعارض والمصالح القومية الأوكرانية بصفتها دولة جارة لروسيا، وتربطها بها علاقات تاريخية مميزة.

وأما الهدف الروسي الصيني الأبعد، فيتمثل في إلحاق هزيمةٍ إستراتيجيةٍ بالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية عبر إحباط خطتها في أوكرانيا، مما يثبِّت: أولًا، تراجع القدرة الأمريكية على الساحة الدولية. وثانيًا، فتح الباب أمام دينامية بعيدة المدى يمكن أن تفضي إلى إعادة تموضع دول الاتحاد السوفييتي السابقة خارج نفوذ حلف شمال الأطلسي، ويكون هذا حال حصل إعادة لعقارب الساعة إلى 1997.

ـ أما الأهداف الأمريكية المباشرة في هذه الحرب، فتتمثل في محاولة إنهاك روسيا عسكريًا قدر المستطاع في أوكرانيا كهدفٍ تكتيكيٍ، مما سيضعف من مكانة روسيا العسكرية إذا ما نجحت في ذلك أمريكا وحلف شمال الأطلسي. وأما إستراتيجيًا، فتسعى أمريكا إلى تدمير الاقتصاد الروسي وانهياره بشكلٍ كاملٍ، وذلك من خلال الحرب الاقتصادية الشرسة التي تشنها بالشراكة مع حلفائها ضد روسيا، في محاولةٍ لإنهاء الدور الروسي تمامًا، مما يمكن أن يفضي إلى تفكك روسيا الاتحادية لاحقًا، وتعي روسيا أن الحرب الاقتصادية التي بدأها الغرب عليها مستمرةٌ حتى بعد انتهاء المعركة العسكرية في أوكرانيا، ولا أدل على ذلك من تصريح رئيس وزراء بريطانيا حينما قال: إن إعادة تطبيع العلاقات مع بوتين كما حصل بعد 2014 سيكون خطأ، وكذلك تلك الدعوات التي خرجت من بعض الأوساط الغربية والتي تدعو إلى محاكمة الرئيس فلاديمير بوتين كمجرم حرب!

وأما على المدى المتوسط أو البعيد حسب تطورات الحرب ضد روسيا، فتهدف أمريكا من وراء تحييد روسيا عن ساحة التنافس الدولي إلى التفرغ لمواجهة الصين لاحقًا، بعد أن تكون قد أفقدت الصين حليفًا إستراتيجيًا، يعد وجوده عاملًا حاسمًا في المواجهة الأمريكية الصينية، وبعد أن بات الأمريكي يعتقد بصعوبة تكرار تجربة هنري كيسنجر مع الصين في حقبة الحرب الباردة.

إذن، فنحن أمام حربٍ دوليةٍ حاسمةٍ، يسعى كل طرفٍ فيها إلى تحقيق نصرٍ إستراتيجيٍ، لذلك الراجح أن تطول هذه الحرب وتزداد تعقيدًا مع مرور الزمن، وبات هذا المسار يتجلى في تصاعد حدة الخطاب الصيني في مواجهة الضغوط الأمريكية عليها، وفي المقابل في التصاعد التدريجي للضغوط الأمريكية على الصين، وذلك في محاولةٍ لإجبارها على الابتعاد عن روسيا في هذا الاشتباك، وتأتي العقوبات التي فرضتها أمريكا مؤخرًا على مسؤولين صينيين من خارج سياق الأحداث في هذا الاطار.

وتبرز هنا القضية التي يود تقدير الموقف هذا التركيز عليها، فلقد كان لافتًا موقف بعض حلفاء الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية التقليديين اتجاه الحرب الدائرة، حيث مازالت دولٌ كالإمارات والسعودية وتركيا ومعهم دولة الاحتلال تتململ في اتخاذ موقفٍ واضحٍ، يساند بشكلٍ كاملٍ وعمليٍ الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية ضد روسيا، وتتباين التقديرات حول خلفيات هذا التململ، فمنها ما يضع موقفيّ الإمارات والسعودية ضمن مناوراتٍ سياسيةٍ بهدف تحصيل مكاسب من الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية في ملفاتٍ إقليميةٍ، كملف العودة إلى الاتفاق النووي مع إيران وملف الحرب على اليمن، وأخرى تضع موقف تركيا ودولة الاحتلال في سياق حساباتٍ لدى هذين الأخيرين، تتعلق بعدم رغبتهما في إغضاب روسيا، لا سيما بعد أن بات لروسيا حضورٌ حاسمٌ في منطقتنا.

لكن أيً كان الحال، فالراجح أمران: 

ـ أن هذا التململ ما كان ليكون لولا تراجع سطوة الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية على حلفائها وفي العالم عمومًا، بغض النظر عن دوافع كل طرف لموقفه الضبابي اتجاه المعركة الراهنة.

ـ أنه نتيجةً لطبيعة المعركة الإستراتيجية كما تبين آنفًا، وارتفاع احتمالية أن تطول وتزداد تعقيدًا مع مرور الزمن، فمن الطبيعي أن يزداد الضغط الأمريكي على حلفائه لاتخاذ موقفٍ واضحٍ ضمن أحد المعسكرين المتقابلين، وهذا ما بدأت تظهر مؤشراته بالفعل.

وعليه، ستجد دولة الاحتلال نفسها مضطرًة للاختيار عاجلًا أم آجلًا، وعلى الأغلب لن تتمكن من المراوغة في مواقفه كثيرًا مع احتدام المعارك، وستكون من عجائب الدنيا إن اختارت التموضع في المعسكر الشرقي ضد المعسكر الغربي، فدولة الاحتلال ليست حليفًا للغرب وحسب، بل هي صنيعته بالكامل، ومرتبطٌة به عضويًا ووجوديًا، وتظل هذه الحقائق أمرًا حاسمًا في خياراتها، مهما تعددت علاقات دولة الاحتلال بدولٍ أخرى حول العالم كبيرةً كانت أم صغيرةً، ويشار هنا إلى الأنباء التي تم تداولها عن بدء الترتيبات لزيارةٍ محتملةٍ لرئيس وزراء دولة الاحتلال قريبًا للعاصمة الأوكرانية كييف.

توصيف “العملية العسكرية الخاصة” الروسية في أوكرانيا على أنها احتلال، ليس بالأمر الأبيض والأسود حسب القانون الدولي كما يحاول الغرب الترويج، فنجد مثلًا أن دولتين كبيرتين وأساسيتين كالصين والهند قد رفضتا إدانة “العملية العسكرية الخاصة” الروسية في أوكرانيا،

وكون هذه المعركة المحتدمة حاليًا تعد معركةً مصيريةً لروسيا وحتى للصين، فلابد أن يكون لتموضع دولة الاحتلال في المعسكر الغربي ـ كما هو متوقعٌ ـ أثرٌ بالغٌ على علاقاتها بروسيا وبالصين كذلك.

ويفتح هذا لحركات المقاومة لا سيما الفلسطينية منها، بابًا واسعًا للعب على تناقض المصالح بين روسيا والصين وبين الكيان المؤقت إذا ما أحسنت اقتناص الفرصة، ففي نهاية المطاف، الكثير من السلاح النوعي والكاسر للتوازن الذي حصلت عليه حركات المقاومة كان روسيًا وصينيًا.

ويبقى أخيرًا الإشارة إلى كون توصيف “العملية العسكرية الخاصة” الروسية في أوكرانيا على أنها احتلال، ليس بالأمر الأبيض والأسود حسب القانون الدولي كما يحاول الغرب الترويج، فنجد مثلًا أن دولتين كبيرتين وأساسيتين كالصين والهند قد رفضتا إدانة “العملية العسكرية الخاصة” الروسية في أوكرانيا، هذا ناهيك عن أنه لا خلاف على كون العقوبات الاقتصادية أحادية الجانب، التي فرضها الغرب على روسيا، تعد خرقًا سافرًا لقواعد التجارة الدولية، وقوانين حرية التجارة حسب منظمة التجارة العالمية “WTO”.

وأما بخصوص الموقف الذي تم وصفه من البعض بموقفٍ “أخلاقي”، والذي قالت به بعض الهيئات العربية التي باتت لبرالية الهوى في جل مواقفها، ومنسجمةً مع الدعاية الغربية في تَقييم غالبية الأحداث الدولية والإقليمية، بغض النظر عن توجه تلك الهيئات سواءً أكانت إسلاميةً أم علمانيةً أم يساريةً، فبإمكانهم مراجعة كلمة الرئيس الأوكراني أمام “كنيست” الكيان المؤقت، حينما ادعى أن ما تتعرض له أوكرانيا من “خطر وعدوان” روسي، يماثل ما يتعرض له الكيان المؤقت من حركات المقاومة، ويحق لنا توقع أن يعتمد الغرب هذه الرواية كونها تدغدغ مشاعره العنصرية وتنسجم مع مصالحه الاستعمارية.

*كاتب وباحث سياسي

Patrick Lancaster: In and Out of Mariupol, March 23rd

Mariupol people are now doing burials of family members and neighbors in their yards

March 23, 2022

By Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor

 Shelling Intensified In Mariupol (GRAPHIC 18+) (Special Report)

First published March 23, 2022

[ Editor’s Note: At VT we thought Lancaster had gone to ground, as it is open hunting season on journalists who are showing what is going on in Donbas. A wise man gets in and gets out, with no predictable itinerary.

Lancaster’s style has been to go in after an area has been cleared to get the interviews with the civilians who endured it, but you will notice that he does not interview soldiers, as most don’t want their faces on YouTube.

When he is being driven in, there is a stream of people leaving, using anything they can to get away from Mariupol, in cars if they are lucky, then bicycles, then pushing a baby carriage or anything they can bring a few personal belongs in, and then those walking with nothing.

These people, along with the dead and the dying and all those who are going to die, on both sides, are all victims of the US-EU-NATO coup by you know who. Biden made a big goof in bringing up the war crimes issue, as he and Obama could easily find themselves on the list.

Eric Zuesse, nailed this key part of the Ukraine story in his June 04, 2018 article for Modern Diplomacy. Here is just one excerpt:

Eric Zuesse

If America’s successful February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government doesn’t soon produce a world-ending nuclear war (World War III), then there will be historical accounts of that overthrow, and the accounts are already increasingly trending and consolidating toward a historical consensus that it was a coup — that it was imposed by “somebody from the new coalition” — i.e., that the termination of the then-existing democratic (though like all its predecessors, corrupt) Ukrainian Government, wasn’t authentically a ‘revolution’ such as the U.S. Government has contended, and certainly wasn’t at all democratic, but was instead a coup (and a very bloody one, at that), and totally illegal (though backed by The West).

That was quite a wordy one sentence explanation, but all are welcome on the ramparts fighting back against the endless stream of grifters we constantly face, with megalomaniac world leaders and corrupt to the bone fake public institutions.

Mariupol people are doing burials of family members and neighbors in their yards now. Strangers get a similar treatment, usually in the yard of an abandoned place, with a marker for when they are all dug up and probably brought to a fitting place of rest so they are not totally anonymous, and a ‘never forget’ monument for them.

The lesson for all of us here, which of course VT readers understand, is that the war against the criminals in Kiev has to be won not only to save innocent Ukrainians on both sides but also won against their grifter enablers so they are stained with their sins forever, which will make their victims a bit happier… Jim W. Dean ]

Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor

Jim W. Dean is Managing Editor of Veterans Today involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.

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