Fly like an eagle, Darya Dugina

August 22, 2022

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

Darya Dugina, 30, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a smart, strong, ebullient, enterprising young woman, whom I met in Moscow and had the honor to cherish as a friend, has been brutally murdered.

As a young journalist and analyst, one could see she would carve for herself a glowing path towards wide recognition and respect (here she is on feminism).

Not so long ago, the FSB was directly engaged in smashing assassination attempts, organized by the SBU, against Russian journalists, as in the case of Olga Skabaeyeva and Vladimir Soloviev. It’s mind-boggling that Dugin and his family were not protected by the Russian intelligence/security apparatus.

The key facts of the tragedy have already been established. A Land Cruiser Prado SUV, owned by Dugin and with Darya at the wheel, exploded in a highway near the village of Bolchie Vyazemy, a little over 20km away from Moscow.

They were both coming from a family festival, where Dugin had delivered a talk. At the last minute, Darya took the SUV and Dugin followed her in another car. According to eyewitnesses, there was an explosion under the SUV, which was immediately engulfed in flames and hit a roadside building. Darya’s body was burned beyond recognition.

The Russian Investigative Committee soon established that the IED – approximately 400g of TNT, unencapsulated – was planted under the bottom of the SUV, on the driver’s side.

The investigators consider that was a premeditated car bombing.

What is not already known is whether the IED was on a timer or if some goon nearby pressed the button.

What is already known is that Alexander Dugin was a target on the Myrotvorets list. Myrotvorets stands for a Center for Research of Signs of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine. It works side by side with NATO collecting info on “pro-Russian terrorists and separatists”.

Denis Pushilin, the head of the DPR, took no time to accuse “the terrorists of the Ukrainian regime” for Darya’s assassination. The inestimable Maria Zakharova was more, well, diplomatic: she said that if the Ukrainian lead is confirmed, that will configure a policy of state terrorism deployed by Kiev.

An existential war

In several essays – this one being arguably the most essential – Dugin had made extensively clear the enormity of the stakes. This is a war of ideas. And an existential war: Russia against the collective West led by the United States.

The SBU, NATO, or quite probably the combo – considering the SBU is ordered by the CIA and MI6 – did not choose to attack Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev or Shoigu. They targeted a philosopher and ended up murdering his daughter – making it even more painful. They attacked an intellectual who formulates ideas. Proving once again that Western Cancel Culture seamlessly metastasizes into Cancel Person.

It’s fine and dandy that the Russian Ministry of Defense is about to start the production of the hypersonic Mr. Zircon as it continues to churn out plenty of Mr. Khinzals. Or that three Mig-31 supersonic interceptors have been deployed to Kaliningrad equipped with Khinzals and placed on combat duty 24/7.

The problem is the rules have changed – and the SBU/NATO combo, facing an indescribable debacle in Donbass, is upping the sabotage, counter-intel and counter-diversionary dial.

They started by shelling Russian territory; spread out around Donbass – as in the attempt to kill the mayor of Mariupol, Konstantin Ivachtchenko; even launched drones against the HQ of the Black Sea Fleet in Sebastopol; and now – with the Darya Dugina tragedy – are on the gates of Moscow.

The point is not that all of the above is irrelevant in terms of changing the facts on the ground imposed by the Special Military Operation. The point is that an upcoming series of bloody psyops designed for pure PR effect can become extremely painful for Russian public opinion – which will demand devastating punishment.

It’s clear that Moscow and St. Petersburg are now prime targets. The Ukrainian ISIS is a go. Of course, their handlers have vast experience on the matter, across the Global North/South. All red lines are gone.

The coming of the Ukrainian ISIS

The cokehead comedian has duly pre-empted any Russian reaction, according to the NATO script he’s fed on a daily basis: Russia may try to do something “particularly disgusting” this coming week.

That’s irrelevant. The real – burning – question is to what extent the Kremlin and Russian intel will react when it’s fully established SBU/NATO concocted the Dugin plot. That’s Kiev terrorism at the gates of Moscow. That screams “red line” in bloody red, and a response tied to the reiterated promise, by Putin himself, of hitting “decision centers”.

It will be a fateful decision. Moscow is not at war with the Kiev puppets, essentially – but with NATO. And vice-versa. All bets are off on how the tragedy of Darya Dugina may eventually accelerate the Russian timetable, in terms of a radical revision of their so far long-term strategy.

Moscow can decapitate the Kiev racket with a few hypersonic business cards. Yet that’s too easy; afterwards, who to negotiate the future of rump Ukraine with?

In contrast, doing essentially nothing means accepting an imminent, de facto terrorist invasion of the Russian Federation: the Darya Dugina tragedy on steroids.

In his next before last post on Telegram, Dugin once again framed the stakes. These are the key takeaways.

He calls for “structural, ideological, personnel, institutional, strategic” transformations by the Russian leadership.

Drawing from the evidence – from the increased attacks on Crimea to the attempts to provoke a nuclear catastrophe in Zaporozhye – he correctly concludes that the NATO sphere has “decided to stand on the other end to the end. They can be understood: Russia actually (and this is not propaganda) challenged the West as a civilization.”

The conclusion is stark: “So we have to go all the way”. That ties in with what Putin himself asserted: “We haven’t really started anything yet.” Dugin: “Now we have to start.”

Dugin proposes that the current status quo around Operation Z cannot last for more than six months. There’s no question “the tectonic plates have shifted”. Darya Dugina will be flying like an eagle in an otherworldly sky. The question is whether her tragedy will become the catalyst to propel Putin’s strategic ambiguity to a whole new level.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov : Member countries of the African Union

July 29, 2022

Editorial Comment: Mr Lavrov’s visits to Arab states, the Arab League, and African states can only be described as a stunning victory and a complete triumph for diplomacy. A short overview is included in the second part of this Operation Z situation report: http://thesaker.is/sitrep-operation-z-collapses-and-progress/
All of the various transcripts can be read at the MFA site: https://www.mid.ru/en/
Short comments and summaries can be found on the MFA Telegram Channel: https://t.me/MFARussia

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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to the questions during a meeting with permanent representatives of the member countries of the African Union and the diplomatic corps, Addis Ababa, July 27, 2022

Your Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Representatives of the media,

Thank you very much for coming here at our invitation. I believed that being in Addis Ababa, it is absolutely important to meet with the African Union members, like I did during all my previous visits. We could not do this at the headquarters for, as far as I understand, scheduling reasons. And I’m glad that you’ve accepted our invitation to come here to the Russian Embassy to discuss issues which are on the top of international agenda.

Many of our Western colleagues try to send the message that the key, if not the only, problem in international relations is the situation around Ukraine. I tend to disagree with such an assertion and during my visit here and  in my previous encounters with my foreign colleagues, I sense a broad understanding that the issue is much more complex and complicated.

What we witness now, especially as the West launches an unprecedented campaign of sanctions, accusations, threats, vis-à-vis Russia and anybody who dares to support Russia or even not to condemn Russia. This campaign indicates that we are living through a very important historical period, a period where we will all be deciding what kind of universe we are going to have and to leave for our children and grandchildren. The universe which is based on the United Nations Charter, which says that the United Nations is founded on the principle of sovereign equality of states, or we will have the world where the right of force, the right of the strongest dominates.

Actually, what it is all about can be described on the following example. Is it our choice to have the world where we have the so-called collective West, totally subordinated to the United States and feeling free, feeling that it has the right to decide when and how to promote its own interests without following the international law, without any respect to the sovereign equality of states?

When our American colleagues felt in the past that there was a threat to their interests, tens of thousands kilometers from the American coast, be it Yugoslavia in 1999, be it Iraq in 2003, be it Libya in 2011, and many other occasions, without any hesitation, without explaining anything to anybody, very often on false pretexts, they just started military operations levelling cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, like it happened in Iraq in the city of Mosul which was literally levelled. The same happened to Raqqa in Syria, where dozens and hundreds of corpses have been lying for weeks unattended and I don’t recall the progressive civilized community raising any big noise about that situation.

When the Russian Federation, not just overnight, but for the last ten long years has been drawing the attention of the United States and its allies to the unacceptable policy which they have been promoting on Ukraine, building Ukraine as a stronghold to contain Russia, pumping more and more modern arms in Ukraine, planning to build naval and military bases in that country and encouraging in all possible ways Russophobic policies of its leaders; when in 2014 we categorically protested to the West that in spite of its guarantees, the opposition in Ukraine staged a bloody coup and when they came to power, the first thing they did was to demand to cancel the status of the Russian language which has been the historical language of Ukraine from the very beginning. They also demanded the Russians to get out of Crimea. They sent armed groups to storm the Parliament of Crimea and then the eastern part of Ukraine protested against the coup.

The putchists called them separatists, terrorists and started a full-fledged military operation against them. And the West as I’ve said, which had guaranteed only a few days before that – guaranteed a peace deal between the former president and the opposition, the deal which provided for creation of a government of national unity and early elections, – this deal was disrupted overnight and the opposition bragged that they created the government of the winners.

See the difference: the government of national unity and the government of the winners. This was an invitation for the civil war because the opposition called part of its own citizens “losers” while the opposition became “winners”.

So when this all started we managed, together with some other countries, to stop it in February 2015 – Minsk Agreements were signed – keeping Ukraine one-piece.

The eastern territories of Ukraine that originally after the coup declared independence were persuaded not to insist on independence and to agree to stay inside Ukraine by these Minsk Agreements, provided they are given a special status. First of all, the right to use the Russian language.

This was endorsed by the Security Council and this was systemically and totally ignored and sabotaged by the Kiev regime with the encouragement of the West.

There was no direct dialogue between Kiev and those territories in spite of the fact that this was directly demanded from the Ukrainian regime by the Security Council.

And few weeks ago the former President of Ukraine P.Poroshenko who signed the Minsk Agreements, proudly stated to the media that “When I was signing it, I never intended to implement it. We just needed more time to get more weapons from the West in order to enable us to resolve the problem of Ukrainian East by the use of force.” Very honestly.

But this is totally neglected by the West. So we have been knocking on the door of our Western colleagues at least since 2013, telling them that this is absolutely a red line when you create a direct threat to the Russian Federation just on our borders. When you create a Russophobic state, which during all these years, managed to pass series of laws, prohibiting – physically, literally, – the use of Russian language in education, in culture, in media, and even in day-to-day life.

And at the same time, legislation was passed to legalize neo-Nazi theories and practices. Neo-Nazi battalions with swastikas and insignias of Waffen-SS, have been mushrooming in Ukraine and becoming the cornerstone of the Ukrainian Army.

It’s a very radicalized country. They glorify the collaborators of Hitler condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal and all this is being done with silent encouragement by the United States and the European Union. And the process which I’ve described was accompanied by the Western attempts, not attempts – policy – to pull Ukraine into NATO.

Dozens of military exercises of NATO with Ukraine were held on Ukrainian territory with an obvious anti-Russian dimension. The efforts of Russia during all these years – it was not just, you know, we say today that this is a threat and excuse us, but we need to remove this threat. It has been happening for at least ten years.

When we’ve told our Western colleagues, “Guys, why are you pulling Ukraine to NATO? You know that this is a hostile organization vis-a-vis Russia, they were telling us, ‘Don’t worry, it will not be detrimental to your security.’”

Russia, as any other self-respectful country has the right to determine itself what is good for its security and what is not. In that case, NATO members led by the United States, opted to decide for us what is good for the Russian Federation.

We reminded them that many years ago in 2010, they all signed up a declaration saying that the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe will be based on the principle of equal and indivisible security, which means that any country can choose alliances, but no country has the right in choosing alliances to increase its security at the expense of the security of other countries. And that no single organization in Europe can pretend to dominate the security space.

NATO is doing exactly this. And NATO, of course, is strengthening the security of its own at the expense of the security of the Russian Federation, because the borders of NATO have been moved just to the borders of Russia.

So we told them, “Guys, political commitments to which your presidents and prime ministers put the signatures don’t work. Let’s make this principle that the security is indivisible and must be equal for all, let’s make it legally binding.”

And we suggested to them respective treaties several times. First, back in 2009 and the last attempt was in December of 2021. And they told us, “Look gentlemen, first there would be no legally binding security guarantees except for NATO members. And second, as regards Ukraine, the relations between NATO and Ukraine are none of your business.” And that was the end of it.

And parallel with this absolute rejection of constructive efforts we have been undertaking for many, many years, parallel to this the Ukrainians, in violation of the Minsk Agreements, started to accumulate huge military force on the line of contact with the eastern part of the country where the two republics have been under siege, basically. They intensified radically the shelling and bombing of those territories.

When we understood that there would be no agreement on security guarantees in Europe which would be equal, when we understood that there would be no implementation of the Minsk Agreements because the Ukrainian leadership publicly renounced this, and when we understood that the only way to save the people in the east of Ukraine was to recognize these two republics, we did so.

We signed the Treaty on Mutual Assistance with them and at their request, we are now exercising a special military operation aimed at saving lives of the citizens of the Donbass and removing any possibility for Ukrainian territory to be used to threaten the security of the Russian Federation.

I am sure that you have been following the events. I know that the Western media presents the situation in a totally distorted manner. If only to mention the so-called food crisis, as if nothing was of concern before February this year.

If you read the reports of the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization, you will refresh your memory and establish the fact that the problems in the world food market started at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when in an attempt to fight this virus and the pandemic consequences the US, the EU and Japan have made an emission for eight trillion dollars’ worth without any economic substantiation, and they use this empty money to buy food and all other goods which they believe would be necessary in case pandemic takes long and there will be closure of countries.

Then there were, of course, increases, long ago, of the price of fertilizers because of the reckless policy of the Western countries on the so-called Green Transition, because the energy supplies, the classical energy resources were more or less discriminated and all this has brought the price of fertilizers high, which of course affected the price of food, and so on and so forth. And then there were not very conducive climate conditions for a couple of years.

And yes, the situation in Ukraine did affect, additionally, negatively affected food markets. But not because of the Russian special operation, rather due to the absolutely inadequate reaction of the West, which announced sanctions, undermining the availability of the food on the markets.

When we explain this to them, they say, “Food and fertilizers are not covered by sanctions”. Yes, but you know, half-truth is worse than a lie. And the truth is that the list of sanctions does not contain an item saying “food”, but what it does contain is prohibition for the Russian ships to call to the ports in the Mediterranean, prohibition for the foreign ships to call on the Russian ports, to pick up food and other cargo, prohibition to insure the Russian ships, because of which insurance prices quadrupled overnight. And of course, prohibition for the main Russian bank, Russian Agricultural Bank, which has always served the payments for Russian food exports – it was listed in the European Union sanctions.

So the latest attempt by our Turkish friends and the Secretary General of the United Nations resulted in a deal between Russia and the United Nations, whereby Secretary General Guterres committed himself to press the Western countries to lift those restrictions, which I just quoted. We’ll see whether he can succeed.

And the same deal as you know, provided for Ukraine an obligation to demine its coastal line for the ships which have been locked there, I think 70 ships from 16 countries since February, to allow them out of the Ukrainian territorial waters, after which Turkish and Russian fleet will ensure their safe travel to the straits and then to the Mediterranean.

So those were the agreements, which could have been announced long, long ago, if not for the Western stubbornness in insisting that they are always right, and all those who don’t agree with them, of course, are always wrong.

A similar situation is taking place with the energy markets. Many years ago, before February this year, the West started discriminating Russian energy projects. First, the project called Nord Stream 1 was limited by 50% of its capacity for no good reason at all. Europe deprived itself of 50% of Russian cheap, accessible gas.

Then Nord Stream 2 was blocked by absolutely illegal action when the legal committee of the European Union ruled that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was built and financed and invested, fully aligned with the existing European norms.

But after that, the European Commission changed the rules retrospectively and applied the new rules to the investment which took place legally several years ago.

So Nord Stream 2 is also not available. Poland, several months ago, stopped taking gas from a direct pipeline from Russia. Ukraine stopped one of the two transit lines through its territory from Russia. And there was some hassle with that turbine which went for maintenance to Canada, then Canada didn’t want to bring it back.

I listed five or six factors which immediately negatively affected gas supplies to Europe volume-wise. And, of course, the less you buy from Russia through a pipeline, which is a price established for long-term, the more expensive prices on the spot.

It reached yesterday, I think, $2,200 for a thousand cubic meters. So the attempts to blame us for everything which goes wrong is an attempt with not very clean purposes and intentions.

What is my point? My point is that it’s a period of history where we will have to choose either to go down the current, which the West tries to move, saying that the world must be run not by international law, but by the rules.

They coined an expression “rules-based world order”. And if you analyze the behavior of our Western colleagues in the international arena, you will understand that these rules differ from case to case. There is no single criteria. There is no single principle, except one. If I want something, you have to obey. If you don’t obey, you would be punished.

This is the picture for the future offered to us by the rules-based world order promoted by the West. Basically, this is the unipolar world where the United States, which subordinated to its own will everybody else in the European Union and allies in Asia… This is the offer. Not even an offer, it is an ultimatum actually.

The alternative to this, and I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of the world countries do not want to live as if the colonial times came back, that the vast majority of the states want to be independent, want to rely on their own tradition, to rely on their own history, to rely on their old friends, don’t want to betray their old friends.

And this is basically evident from the fact that except two or three developing countries, no one else in Africa, Asia or Latin America joined the illegal American and European sanctions.

And back to the United Nations Charter. I believe, when we speak about more just, more democratic world order, we don’t need to invent anything. Once again, I quote the Charter which says that the United Nations is based on the principle of sovereign equality of states.

And to recognize that each state is independent, each state has the right to determine how it wants to live, what kind of economic, social, political system it wants to choose on the basis of the will of its people. And I have no slightest doubt that any normal state wants to be like this. Nobody wants to have enemies. This is also an absolute truth. Neither Russia nor any other country present in this hall – I have no doubt.

But if countries, like we witness now the behavior of the West, if they do want to have enemies, as they publicly declared in their doctrines, in the decisions of the latest NATO summit in Madrid – they do want enemies, they appoint enemies, they appoint the order in which they handle these enemies. Now Russia is the first, China is earmarked as the existential challenge for the long term. And all this manifests in renewed thinking about how the world economy and the world system operates.

If the US and the European Union – under the demand of the US – decided to freeze the Russian reserves – and now they seriously start a legal process to prepare the basis to confiscate the Russian money – who knows… If they become irritated by somebody else tomorrow or the day after, they might do the same.

In other words, the reliance on dollar as the instrument supporting the world economy is not very promising, frankly speaking. And it is not by incident that more and more countries are shifting to using alternative currencies, shifting to use national currencies more and more, and this process will be gaining momentum.

This is not to say that we are suggesting some kind of revolution against the dollar, against the United States – this is to state the obvious: the West created a system which was based on certain principles – free market, fair competition, sanctity of private property, presumption of innocence, and something else. All these principles have been thrown down the drain when they needed to do what they believe is to punish Russia.

And I don’t have the slightest doubt that, if need be, they will not hesitate to do the same in relation to any other country which would irritate them one way or another.

I mentioned China as the next target. It’s a very interesting example of how the Americans consider fair competition in practice. Actually, China developed into the number one world economy – everybody recognizes this – and China did so, China achieved those results, working and acting on the basis of the rules established by the West. The IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the rules to settle disputes, competition and the stuff. China accepted those rules in developing its own economy and China defeated the West, economically and trade-wise, investment-wise, on its own turf, on the basis of the rules invented by the West.

And what happened next? Already a couple of years ago, the Secretary of Treasury of the United States and some other officials started saying, “We need to reform the Bretton Woods Institutions, we need to reform the WTO and we need to organize this reform between the US and Europe not to allow anybody else to participate in developing new rules.”

Guys, it is absolutely obvious, how they want this world to be operated. And I believe, as long as it is not too late, we would be ready to talk to our Western friends when they come back to their senses about how they think they should live together with all of us in the future. But this conversation can only be made on full equality, with full respect to the legitimate interests of all of us.

If I took too long of your time, I apologize. And I understand there might be a couple of questions, right?

Question: Your Excellency, Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation,

On behalf of the people of South Sudan, the Government and on my own behalf, I wish to take this opportunity to express my personal gratitude to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Ethiopia for inviting me and my delegation here.

We are grateful that our two countries, the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Sudan enjoy cordial bilateral relations, dating back to the day of our declaration of independence, where the Russian people and their Government were among those who recognized our statehood on July 9, 2011. Since then Your Excellency, the people and the governments of two countries have stood with the people and the Government of South Sudan in many ways.

The people of South Sudan wish to express their gratitude for your immense support in the UNSC, the Human Rights Council in Geneva and other activities where you supported us. First of all, as you explained, Your Excellency, you outlined your view on sanctions. Now we know what’s really going on.

On the current political situation in my country I would like to inform Your Excellency the Minister that the signed revitalized peace agreement of 2018 is holding despite the challenges that you have mentioned. These include numerous sanctions by Western countries and their allies, and an arms embargo. Other factors of concern are natural disasters, such as heavy rains…

Sergey Lavrov: I apologize, can you pass on this text? Because it would be useful and more polite to the others. Ok? Please, pass it. Thank you!

Just one remark. We are against those sanctions which are intended to punish people. And don’t forget that the initiators of these sanctions against you are exactly the same countries who wanted to create South Sudan out of Sudan.

Question: Thank you very much for giving a very detailed and covering all important aspects in your briefing. A short question: How the hegemony of dollar can be controlled by international community because right now the countries like Pakistan and many developing countries are suffering from huge debt that continues to grow. The problem is getting worse. I would like you to clarify the situation.

Sergey Lavrov: I am not an expert in monetary affairs. What I said was it’s an obvious feeling by many countries that the dollar is not reliable, because the capricious behavior could be aimed at anyone in the future.

I know that you can feel this on yourself, if you compare the situation of 20-30 years ago and now. So, it’s life. It’s life. And nobody wants to go to war because of the dollar and I believe this is crazy.  But people want to have some insurance as regards the reliability of their economic and trade relations with their partners. And there are examples, including the use of national currencies, including barter, including clearing mechanisms. Some might say this is going back to the past instruments of conducting trade. But there would be digital currencies, I don’t have the slightest doubt, which are already being developed in China, for example, in Venezuela, in Iran.

We are thinking about this as well. It’s the beginning of a process. Now we have accumulated the elements of the problem and we know that it must be addressed.

Question: With an approach of winter during which gas importations increase. How does Russia going to export its gas and circumvent the sanctions imposed? 15 African countries import more than 50% of their grain from Russia. The situation also affected the exports from African countries to Russia. How does Russia intend to manage trade relations with Africa?

Sergey Lavrov: I think I addressed both issues in my remarks. I hope you listened to me. Antonio Guterres personally promised to make sure that the US and EU remove any obstacles to the export of Russian grain. If you add your noble voice to his efforts, I think it would be useful.

And on gas prices – I also explained how Europe systemically, during the last almost ten years, was creating barriers on the way of bringing to European countries cheap and accessible Russian gas.

I listed five or six specific decisions which were cutting more and more of Russian exports, vacating the room in Europe for much more expensive LNG from the United States, just like, you know, the US insists that Europe sends all its weapons to Ukraine, vacating the arms market in Europe for the import of American weapons. It’s “nothing personal, it’s business.”

As regards your country (Algeria), the Europeans are now thinking of alternative sources of supply. They have suffocated themselves with their own hands the pipeline routes from Russia. Now they are  looking for alternatives. And I know that the Mediterranean, including Algeria, is one of those sources.

They would be asking you to help, and it’s up to your companies to decide, it’s up to your government to decide.

In our case, according to our experiences that when we had long-term contracts with Europe, these long-term contracts protected our interests. But, a few years ago, Europe started cutting long-term contracts saying, “Let’s shift to the spot market”. And the spot market does not guarantee that you will have a long-term investment justified.

So, what we see now is not a scientific, not a responsible approach to the energy markets – it’s a hectic search for something which can save you this winter, with the green agenda shelved for the time being.

The coal is coming back, polluting the atmosphere – it’s a mess, if you take a look at the energy and environment policy that Europe is promoting. I am sorry to say this. We are not getting any happiness or joy from what Europe is experiencing, but they have been doing this to themselves for quite some time already.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have to apologize because the minister – my colleague from Ethiopia – is   waiting for me for the next event. Once again I want to thank you whole-heartedly for accepting our invitation. I hope it was not a waste of time. I tried to be as frank as I can, and we would be ready to promote dialogue with the African Union.

Unfortunately, we could not meet at the headquarters. And we would be ready for a dialogue on all these and any other issues of interest and of importance with you bilaterally. With all of you we have good relations and channels of communication.

I wish you all the best and keep healthy. Thank you very much.

Ideologies are no longer the way we know them and this means that the world is being reconfigured

July 17, 2022

Source

By Guilherme Wilbert

I try to bring a reflection in most of my texts about what competes for the international diplomatic and monetary future after Operation Z in Ukraine, but also, I always try to bring the ideological part into the discussion because this still makes many people’s heads spin. Or are Ukrainian flag-wavers not ideologized?

Capitalism and communism have always been enemies at their core, especially in their own archetypes, since communism is internationalist, while pure capitalism is just the simplest way of doing business: you give me money for what it is worth, and I give you the product.

It turns out that along with the collapse of communism after the Soviet collapse in 1991, capitalism has also spiraled, and its most vile forms are found in meta-capitalists and monopolizing companies, which distort the real meaning of free markets, open competition and more.

What happens is that some businessmen behave like communists with money because they use their companies to carry out monopolies and cartels around the world, with the simplest case being that of Brazil, which has a nation of 200 million people to more and only has 5 banks in Brazilian territory operating, these being: Banco do Brasil (created by D. João VI of Portugal during the Brazilian Empire), Caixa Econômica Federal (which is a kind of banking autarchy of the Brazilian Federal Government), Itaú, Santander and Bradesco.  Even HSBC was strong in the country, but could not stand it and closed its operation last decade.

The case of Brazil is a clear example of a country that fell victim to the metacapitalists, even though it had a leftist government like the Workers Party led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of the country.

And this proves how even orthodox socialism, which is the case of the ideology-north of the Workers Party of Brazil, can be eroded by metacapitalism and its bad ways of doing business.

The point is that cartels, monopolies, oligopolies are distorted forms of capitalism, which look very much like a communist quasi-statist economy because the monopolizer behaves like a communist strong state. And this destroys the sense that is used to identify a communist or capitalist militancy in some countries because the real goals of the ideologies cited here are not made explicit up front. This makes for a dumb and innocuous militancy that sometimes is fighting for the same things without realizing it.

While the communist militant likes a strong State that monopolizes natural resources or not, the meta-capitalist also likes the State because it helps him to make and maintain his monopoly. That is why it is not rare to see people like George Soros, prominent bankers, supporting wealth taxes, for example, because it would be a way for them to continue using the state territory to carry out their monopolies and cartels.

Another practical example coming from Brazil are telephone lines: the country has only 4 cell phone companies, with one (Oi Telecomunicações) in receivership because it is in bad shape.

During Lula’s communist government in the country, the banks had the highest profits, several newspapers reported at the time.  This is a clear proof of the distortion of the communist discourse that usually carries the popular feeling but sometimes only makes its leaders richer and more powerful and more brutal.

Fidel Castro, who died richer than Queen Elizabeth II, it is said.

And a global international reconfiguration is happening right now, with the various economic blocs of countries in the Global South becoming closer together.

This is also because of the ideological capitalist exhaustion due to monopolizing meta-capitalism, or communism, when the exacerbated statization and planned economy is proving wrong again in the countries, making the real economy of production take over the discourse and making smarter heads.

Wars still happen because of ideologies, but they can be stopped by them too

When the clash of civilizations happened in 2019, with the world distrusting China for being bad at preserving Covid-19 cases, as well as trying lockdowns recently that destroyed the global supply chain of production, a lot of bad thought was given to a strong and sovereign state like China’s, especially the more ideologized ones, who blamed the country’s trademark hammer and sickle as the cause of the problems plaguing the world at the time. Except that today, 3 years later, China, which is clearly totally ideologized, may be guiding some parts of the Global South towards an inter-country integration that involves the monetary, diplomatic and trade issues. In other words, the China that would have caused the Covid-19 problem for some ideologues, may be the same country that can save the global economy when the dollar collapses. And it will collapse. It is just a matter of time.

While NATO, which carries an air of the cold war because it still exists even after the end of the Warsaw Pact, is trying to emulate a kind of international police force, going against the very name of the military organization, which in theory would only be in the North Atlantic Sea, today it is already in Asia and Oceania. In what is seen as the opposite thinking of the leaders of Eurasia and the Global South.

Some diplomats from within NATO have even talked about “Global NATO”. What is this if not a trace of colonialism ingrained in the Atlanticist organization to stand up to the enthusiasts of multipolarity, who have sometimes ended up being characterized by the flags with sickle and hammer?

The clearest point I try to make is that ideologies have been eroded by the mistakes or successes of their own leaders, distorting the orthodox common sense of centuries-old doctrines like communism for example. This was seen when the US opened the international market to China, which made them the second global economy today.

But there was also no good interpretation from the West towards Russia for example, which today is a totally different country from the Soviet Union, and could have become an ally. Which would totally change the scenario we are living today.

So ideologies can stop or make wars, either by capitalism or by communists.

Capitalism at war means monopolies arising, while communists at war means massive genocides arising.

Corroded ideology is not necessarily a bad thing, but it shows a breakdown in thinking in society

Ideologies arise as a way of trying to organize models of government, and several of them have even been criminalized around the world due to the massacres they have carried out. But at the same time, this does not mean that they will cease to exist.

When a society thinks 50% one thing and another half thinks 50% another thing, this means that there is a polarity of thoughts that can only lead to chaos and barbarism, because the people, hungry or in difficulty, are not able to come to a consensus, and then authoritarianism and popular uprisings arise.

The corrosion of ideologies, be they capitalist or communist, was something that would happen naturally because time goes on proving some points that have always been pushed by the enthusiasts of such as absolute truths, which are lies.

Several are the cases of communist countries that collapsed and several are the countries that collapse because of meta-capitalism. This is why we must abandon ideologies and simple ways of thinking when it comes to a nation, a homeland.

A homeland is much bigger than a 19th-century German writing. A nation is much bigger and means much more than a Politburo.

Capitalism and communism behave today as different sides of the same coin, with their owners and enthusiasts having the same origins.  Instead of studying the end result, look for the cause. Many coincidences can arise.

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Guilherme Wilbert is a Brazilian law graduate interested in geopolitics and international law.

Russia and China haven’t even started to ratchet up the pain dial

July 13, 2022

by Pepe Escobar and posted with the author’s permission

The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia, much to the astonishment of virtually the whole Global South: a trashy, woke Gotterdammerung remake, with Wagnerian grandeur replaced by twerking.

Decadent Roman Emperors at least exhibited some degree of pathos. Here we’re just faced by a toxic mix of hubris, abhorrent mediocrity, delusion, crude ideological sheep-think and outright irrationality wallowing in white man’s burden racist/supremacist slush – all symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.

To call it the Biden-Leyen-Blinken West or so would be too reductionist: after all these are puny politico/functionaries merely parroting orders. This is a historical process: physical, psychic and moral cognitive degeneration embedded in NATOstan’s manifest desperation in trying to contain Eurasia, allowing occasional tragicomic sketches such as a NATO summit proclaiming Woke War against virtually the whole non-West.

So when President Putin addresses the collective West in front of Duma leaders and heads of political parties, it does feel like a comet striking an inert planet. It’s not even a case of “lost in translation”. “They” simply aren’t equipped to get it.

The “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” part was at least formulated to be understood even by simpletons:

“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield, well, what can I say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian – this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But it looks like it’s all coming to this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”

Fact. On Operation Z, Russia is using a fraction of its military potential, resources and state of the art weapons.

Then we come to the most probable path ahead in the war theater:

“We do not refuse peace negotiations, but those who refuse should know that the longer it drags, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.”

As in the pain dial will be ratcheted up, slowly but surely, on all fronts.

Yet the meat of the matter had been delivered earlier in the speech: “ratcheting up the pain dial” applies in fact to dismantling the whole “rules-based international order” edifice. The geopolitical world has changed. Forever.

Here’s the arguably key passage:

“They should have understood that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation, because its beginning means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the World Order in the American way. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world – a world based not on selfish rules invented by someone for themselves, behind which there is nothing but the desire for hegemony, not on hypocritical double-standards, but on international law, on the true sovereignty of peoples and civilizations, on their will to live their historical destiny, their values and traditions and build cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality. And we must understand that this process can no longer be stopped.”

Meet the trifecta

A case can be made that Putin and Russia’s Security Council are implementing a tactical trifecta that has reduced the collective West to an amorphous bunch of bio headless chickens.

The trifecta mixes the promise of negotiations – but only when considering Russia’s steady advances on the ground in Novorossiya; the fact that Russia’s global “isolation” has been proved in practice to be nonsense; and tweaking the most visible pain dial of them all: Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The main reason for the graphic, thundering failure of the G20 Foreign Ministers summit in Bali is that the G7 – or NATOstan plus American colony Japan – could not force the BRICS plus major Global South players to isolate, sanction and/or demonize Russia.

On the contrary: multiple interpolations outside of the G20 spell out even more Eurasia-wide integration. Here are a few examples.

The first transit of Russian products to India via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) is now in effect, crisscrossing Eurasia from Mumbai to the Baltic via Iranian ports (Chabahar or Bandar Abbas), the Caspian Sea, and Southern and Central Russia. Crucially, the route is shorter and cheaper than going through the Suez Canal.

In parallel, the head of the Iranian Central Bank, Ali Salehabadi, confirmed that a memorandum of interbank cooperation was signed between Tehran and Moscow.

That means a viable alternative to SWIFT, and a direct consequence of Iran’s application to become a full BRICS member, announced at the recent summit in Beijing. The BRICS, since 2014, when the New Development Bank (NDB) was founded, have been busy building their own financial infrastructure, including the near future creation of a single reserve currency. As part of the process, the harmonization of Russian and Iranian banking systems is inevitable.

Iran is also about to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the upcoming summit in Samarkand in September.

In parallel, Russia and Kazakhstan are solidifying their strategic partnership: Kazakhstan is a key member of BRI, EAEU and SCO.

India gets even closer to Russia across the whole spectrum of trade – including energy.

And next Tuesday, Tehran will be the stage for a crucial face-to-face meeting between Putin and Erdogan.

Isolation? Really?

On the energy front, it’s only summer, but demented paranoia is already raging across multiple EU latitudes, especially Germany. Comic relief is provided by the fact that Gazprom can always point out to Berlin that eventual supplying problems on Nord Stream 1 – after the cliffhanger return of that notorious repaired turbine from Canada – can always be solved by implementing Nord Stream 2.

As the whole European Suicide Spectacular Summer Show is nothing but a tawdry self-inflicted torture ordered by His Master’s Voice, the only serious question is which pain dial level will force Berlin to actually sit down and negotiate on behalf of legitimate German industrial and social interests.

Rough and tumble will be the norm. Foreign Minister Lavrov summed it all up when commenting on the Declining Collective West Ministers striking poses like infantile brats in Bali to avoid being seen with him: that was up to “their understanding of the protocols and politeness.”

That’s diplo-talk for “bunch of jerks”. Or worse: cultural barbarians, as they were even unable to respect the hyper-polite Indonesian hosts, who abhor confrontation.

Lavrov preferred to extol the “joint strategic and constructive” Russian-Chinese work when faced with a very aggressive West. And that brings us to the prime masterpiece of shadowplay in Bali – complete with several layers of geopolitical fog.

Chinese media, always flirting with the opaque, tried to put its bravest face ever depicting the over 5-hour meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary Blinken as “constructive”.

What’s fascinating here is that the Chinese ended up letting something crucial out of the bag to slip into the final draft of their report – obviously approved by the powers that be.

Lu Xiang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences went through previous readouts – especially of “Yoda” Yang Jiechi routinely turning Jake Sullivan into roasted duck – and stressed that this time Wang’s “warnings” to the Americans were “the sternest one in wording”.

That’s diplo-code for “You Better Watch Out”: Wang telling Little Blinkie, “just look at what the Russians did when they lost their patience with your antics.”

The expression ”dead end” was recurrent during the Wang-Blinken meeting. So in the end the Global Times had to tell it like it really is:  “The two sides are close to a showdown.”

“Showdown” is what End of Days fanatic and Tony Soprano wannabe Mike Pompeo is fervently preaching from his hate pulpit, while the combo behind the senile “leader of the free world” who literally reads teleprompters actively work for the crashing of the EU – in more ways than one.

The combo in power in Washington actually “supports” the unification of Britain, Poland, Ukraine and The Three Baltic Midgets as a separate alliance from NATO/EU – aiming at “strengthening the defense potential.” That’s the official position of US Ambassador to NATO Julian Smith.

So the real imperial aim is to split the already shattering EU into mini-union pieces, all of them quite fragile and evidently more “manageable”, as Brussels Eurocrats, blinded by boundless mediocrity, obviously can’t see it coming.

What the Global South is buying

Putin always makes it very clear that the decision to launch Operation Z – as a sort of pre-emptive “combined arms and police operation”, as defined by Andrei Martyanov – was carefully calculated, considering an array of material and socio-psychological vectors.

Anglo-American strategy, for its part, lasers on a single obsession: damn any possible reframing of the current “rules-based international order”. No holds are barred to ensure the perpetuity of this order. This is in fact Totalen Krieg – featuring several hybrid layers, and quite worrying, with only a few seconds to midnight.

And there’s the rub. Desolation Row is fast becoming Desperation Row, as the whole Russophobic matrix is shown to be naked, devoid of any extra ideological – and even financial – firepower to “win”, apart from shipping a collection of HIMARS to a black hole.

Geopolitically and geoeconomically, Russia and China are in the process of eating NATOstan alive – in more ways than one. Here, for instance, is a synthetic road map of how Beijing will address the next stage of high-quality development via capital-driven industrial upgrading, focused on optimization of supply chains, import substitution of hard technologies, and “invisible champions” of industry.

If the collective West is blinded by Russophobia, the governing success of the Chinese Communist Party – which in a matter of a few decades improved the lives of more people than anyone, anytime in History – drives it completely nuts.

All along the Russia-China watchtower, it’s been not such a long time coming. BRI was launched by Xi Jinping in 2013. After Maidan in 2014, Putin launched the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015. Crucially, in May 2015, a Russia-China joint statement sealed the cooperation between BRI and EAEU, with a significant role assigned to the SCO.

Closer integration advanced via the St. Petersburg forum in 2016 and the BRI forum in 2017. The overall target: to create a new order in Asia, and across Eurasia, according to international law while maintaining the individual development strategies of each concerned country and respecting their national sovereignty.

That, in essence, is what most of the Global South is buying. It’s as if there’s a cross-border instinctual understanding that Russia-China, against serious odds and facing serious challenges, proceeding by trial and error, are at the vanguard of the Shock of the New, while the collective West, naked, dazed and confused, their masses completely zombified, is sucked into the maelstrom of psychological, moral and material disintegration.

No question the pain dial will be ratcheted up, in more ways than one.

• Letter from Faina Savenkova: To my friends from America
• The international political debacle proves that the unipolar system is crumbling
• Arms for victory over Russia? No, for their resale!
• Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place
• The Russians got the US M777 Howitzer.

‼️ We Are Z

July 01, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

The Schloss Elmau, ‘a Luxury Spa Retreat and Cultural Hideaway’ was a very suitable location at the end of June 2022 for the G7 elitists, ‘hiding away’ from the anger of their exploited peoples. Holed up in a castle in Bavaria (sounds familiar?), protected by thousands of paramilitaries, the neo-feudal Gang of 7 of the Western world met and condemned freedom, which is another word for multipolarity.

Now freedom is represented by Z. Z means belonging to the Russian World, which is carrying out the existential Special Operation to save itself and the world from the global dictatorship of evil. The Russian World means all who are opposed to the Western/Anglo-Zionist/Globalist/NATO/Nazi ideology and its fake and failed puppet-states, which exist only to ensure the prolongation of colonial oppression and buy overpriced US arms and parrot their propaganda.

We who identify with Z live all over the world, even within the semi-conquered heartlands of the Evil Empire, in the USA, Canada, the UK, the EU, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. Here in Europe we in Z fight against the US-imposed EU Fourth Reich. But everywhere the letter Z is to be drawn as a sign of hope by all free people who still believe in the God, Who is not mocked.

We are Z, who do not belong to your world,

Where freedom is denied in the name of the tyrannical ‘democratic’ system, in which only one country controls the rest of the world and cruelly exploits it,

Where as a result universal traditions of faith, patriotism and family are despised and trampled down,

Where as a result more money is spent on Offence (‘Defence’) than on any basic human needs,

Where as a result rich countries live in debt at the expense of poor countries,

Where as a result transnational corporations rule and exploit vast tracts of the globe,

Where the land, the sea and the air are sullied by complex manmade chemical compounds which destroy life,

Where as a result vastly rich individuals are richer than whole nations,

Where as a result corruption is so rife that many are murdered or are in prison for no other reason than telling the truth,

Where as a result slavery has again become commonplace,

Where as a result countries such as Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen suffer genocide at the hands of Western imperialism,

Where as a result there is no right to self-determination for oppressed peoples, like those in the Crimea and the Donbass,

Where as a result the mainstream media, all controlled by the same hegemon, can only tell lies and oppress,

Where as a result one billion are obese and one billion starve,

Where the words Freedom and Truth, Justice and Tradition, Humanity and Sovereignty are cynically mocked and heartily detested.

We are Z and we will not go gentle into your dark night ‼️

You’re either with us or you’re a “systemic challenge”

June 30, 2022

Source

After all we’re deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

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

Fast but not furious, the Global South is revving up. The key takeaway of the BRICS+ summit in Beijing,  held in sharp contrast with the G7 in the Bavarian Alps, is that both West Asia’s Iran and South America’s Argentina officially applied for BRICS membership.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has highlighted how BRICS has “a very creative mechanism with broad aspects”. Tehran – a close partner of both Beijing and Moscow – already had “a series of consultations” about the application: the Iranians are sure that will “add value” to the expanded BRICS.

Talk about China, Russia and Iran being sooooo isolated. Well, after all we’re deep into the metaverse spectrum, where things are the opposite of what they seem.

Moscow’s obstinacy in not following Washington’s Plan A to start a pan-European war is rattling Atlanticist nerves to the core. So right after the G7 summit significantly held at a former Nazi sanatorium, enter NATO’s, in full warmongering regalia.

So welcome to an atrocity exhibition featuring total demonization of Russia, defined as the ultimate “direct threat”; the upgrading of Eastern Europe into “a fort”; a torrent of tears shed about the Russia-China strategic partnership; and as an extra bonus, the branding of China as a “systemic challenge”.

There you go: for the NATO/G7 combo, the leaders of the emerging multipolar world as well as the vast swathes of the Global South that want to join in, are a “systemic challenge”.

Turkiye under the Sultan of Swing – Global South in spirit, tightrope walker in practice – got literally everything it wanted to magnanimously allow Sweden and Finland to clear their paths on the way of being absorbed by NATO.

Bets can be made on what kind of shenanigans NATO navies will come up with in the Baltics against the Russian Baltic Fleet, to be followed by assorted business cards distributed by Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Zircon, Mr. Onyx and Mr. Kalibr, capable of course of annihilating any NATO permutation, including “decision centers”.

So it came as a sort of perverse comic relief when Roscosmos released a set of quite entertaining satellite images pinpointing the coordinates of those “decision centers”.

The “leaders” of NATO and the G7 seem to enjoy performing a brand of lousy cop/clownish cop routine. The NATO summit told coke comedian Elensky (remember, the letter “Z” is verboten) that the Russian combined arms police operation – or war – must be “resolved” militarily. So NATO will continue to help Kiev to fight till the last Ukrainian cannon fodder.

In parallel, at the G7, German Chancellor Scholz was asked to specify what “security guarantees” would be provided to what’s left of Ukraine after the war. Response from the grinning Chancellor: “Yes … I could” (specify). And then he trailed off.

Illiberal Western liberalism

Over 4 months after the start of Operation Z, zombified Western public opinion completely forgot – or willfully ignores – that Moscow spent the last stretch of 2021 demanding a serious discussion on legally binding security guarantees from Washington, with an emphasis on no more NATO eastward expansion and a return to the 1997 status quo.

Diplomacy did fail, as Washington emitted a non-response response. President Putin had stressed the follow-up would be a “military technical” response (that turned out to be Operation Z) even as the Americans warned that would trigger massive sanctions.

Contrary to Divide and Rule wishful thinking, what happened after February 24 only solidified the synergistic Russia-China strategic partnership – and their expanded circle, especially in the context of BRICS and the SCO. As Sergey Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy noted earlier this year, “China is our strategic cushion (…) We know that in any difficult situation, we can lean on it for military, political and economic support.”

That was outlined in detail for all the Global South to see by the landmark February 4th joint statement for Cooperation Entering a New Era – complete with the accelerated integration of BRI and the EAEU in tandem with military intelligence harmonization under the SCO (including new full member Iran), key foundation stones of multipolarism.

Now compare it with the wet dreams of the Council on Foreign Relations or assorted ravings by armchair strategic “experts” of “the top national security think tank in the world” whose military experience is limited to negotiating a can of beer.

Makes one yearn for those serious analytic days when the late, great Andre Gunder Frank penned ” a paper on the paper tiger” , examining American power at the crossroads of paper dollar and the Pentagon.

The Brits, with better imperial education standards, at least seem to understand, halfway, how Xi Jinping “has embraced a variant of integral nationalism not unlike those that emerged in interwar Europe”, while Putin “skillfully deployed Leninist methods to resurrect an enfeebled Russia as a global power.”

Yet the notion that “ideas and projects originating in the illiberal West continue to shape global politics” is nonsense, as Xi in fact is inspired by Mao as much as Putin is inspired by several Eurasianist theoreticians. What’s relevant is that in the process of the West plunging into a geopolitical abyss, “Western liberalism has itself become illiberal.”

Much worse: it actually became totalitarian.

Holding the Global South hostage

The G7 is essentially offering to most of the Global South a toxic cocktail of massive inflation, rising prices and uncontrolled dollarized debt.

Fabio Vighi has brilliantly outlined how “the purpose of the Ukrainian emergency is to keep the money printer switched on while blaming Putin for worldwide economic downturn. The war serves the opposite aim of what we are told: not to defend Ukraine but to prolong the conflict and nourish inflation in a bid to defuse cataclysmic risk in the debt market, which would spread like wildfire across the whole financial sector.”

And if it can get worse, it will. At the Bavarian Alps, the G7 promised to find “ways to limit the price of Russian oil and gas”: if that doesn’t work according to “market methods”, then “means will be imposed by force”.

A G7 “indulgence” – neo-medievalism in action – would only be possible if a prospective buyer of Russian energy agrees to strike a deal on the price with G7 representatives.

What this means in practice is that the G7 arguably will be creating a new body to “regulate” the price of oil and gas, subordinated to Washington’s whims: for all practical purposes, a major twist of the post-1945 system.

The whole planet, especially the Global South, would be held hostage.

Meanwhile, in real life, Gazprom is on a roll, making as much money from gas exports to the EU as it did in 2021, even though it’s shipping much smaller volumes.

About the only thing this German analyst gets right is that were Gazprom forced to cut off supplies for good, that would represent “the implosion of an economic model that is over-reliant on industrial exports, and therefore on imports of cheap fossil fuels. Industry is responsible for 36% of Germany’s gas use.”

Think, for instance, BASF forced to halt production at the world’s biggest chemicals plant in Ludwigshafen. Or Shell’s CEO stressing it’s absolutely impossible to replace Russian gas supplied to the EU via pipelines with (American) LNG.

This coming implosion is exactly what Washington neocon/neoliberalcon circles want – removing a powerful (Western) economic competitor from the world trading stage. What’s truly astonishing is that Team Scholz can’t even see it coming.

Virtually no one remembers what happened a year ago when the G7 struck a pose of trying to help the Global South. That was branded as Build Back Better World (B3W). “Promising projects” were identified in Senegal and Ghana, there were “visits” to Ecuador, Panama and Colombia. The Crash Test Dummy administration was offering “the full range” of US financial tools: equity stakes, loan guarantees, political insurance, grants, technical expertise on climate, digital technology and gender equality.

The Global South was not impressed. Most of it had already joined BRI. B3W went down with a whimper.

Now the EU is promoting its new “infrastructure” project for the Global South, branded as Global Gateway, officially presented by European Commission (EC) Fuhrer Ursula von der Leyen and – surprise! – coordinated with the floundering B3W. That’s the Western “response” to BRI, demonized as – what else – “a debt trap”.

Global Gateway in theory should be spending 300 billion euros in 5 years; the EC will come up with only 18 billion from the EU budget (that is, financed by EU taxpayers), with the intention of amassing 135 billion euros in private investment. No Eurocrat has been able to explain the gap between the announced 300 billion and the wishful thinking 135 billion.

In parallel, the EC is doubling down on their floundering Green Energy agenda – blaming, what else, gas and coal. EU climate honcho Frans Timmermans has uttered an absolute pearl: “Had we had the green deal five years earlier, we would not be in this position because then we would have less dependency on fossil fuels and natural gas.”

Well, in real life the EU remains stubbornly on the road to become a fully de-industrialized wasteland by 2030. Inefficient solar or wind-based Green Energy is incapable of offering stable, reliable power. No wonder vast swathes of the EU are now Back to Coal.

The right kind of swing

It’s a tough call to establish who’s The Lousiest in the NATO/G7 cop routine. Or the most predictable. This is what I published about the NATO summit . Not now: in 2014, eight years ago. The same old demonization, over and over again.

And once again, if it can get worse, predictably it will. Think of what’s left of Ukraine – mostly eastern Galicia – being annexed to the Polish wet dream: the revamped Intermarium, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, now dubbed as a bland “Three Seas Initiative” (with the added Adriatic) and comprising 12 nation-states.

What that implies long-term is a EU breakdown from within. Opportunist Warsaw just profits financially from the Brussels system’s largesse while holding its own hegemonic designs. Most of the “Three Seas” will end up exiting the EU. Guess who will guarantee their “defense”: Washington, via NATO. What else is new? The revamped Intermarium concept goes back all the way to the late Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski.

So Poland dreams of becoming the Intermarium leader, seconded by the Three Baltic Midgets, enlarged Scandinavia, plus Bulgaria and Romania. Their aim is straight from Comedy Central: reducing Russia into “pariah state” status – and then the whole enchilada: regime change, Putin out, balkanization of the Russian Federation.

Britain, that inconsequential island, still invested in teaching Empire to the American upstarts, will love it. Germany-France-Italy much less. Lost in the wilderness Euro-analysts dream of a European Quad (Spain added), replicating the Indo-Pacific scam, but in the end it will all depend which way Berlin swings.

And then there’s that unpredictable Global South stalwart led by the Sultan of Swing: freshly rebranded Turkiye. Soft neo-Ottomanism seems to be on a roll, still expanding its tentacles from the Balkans and Libya to Syria and Central Asia. Evoking the golden age of the Sublime Porte, Istanbul is the only serious mediator between Moscow and Kiev. And it’s carefully micromanaging the evolving process of Eurasia integration.

The Americans were on the verge of regime-changing the Sultan. Now they have been forced to listen to him. Talk about a serious geopolitical lesson to the whole Global South: it don’t mean a “systemic challenge” thing if you’ve got the right kind of swing.

Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7

June 28, 2022

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The west is nostalgically caught up with outdated ‘containment’ policies, this time against Global South integration. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world is moving on, together.

The Cradle

Once upon a time, there existed an Iron Curtain which divided the continent of Europe. Coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the term was in reference to the then-Soviet Union’s efforts to create a physical and ideological boundary with the west. The latter, for its part, pursued a policy of containment against the spread and influence of communism.

Fast forward to the contemporary era of techno-feudalism, and there now exists what should be called a Tin Curtain, fabricated by the fearful, clueless, collective west, via G7 and NATO: this time, to essentially contain the integration of the Global South.

BRICS against G7

The most recent and significant example of this integration has been the coming out of BRICS+ at last week’s online summit hosted by Beijing. This went far beyond establishing the lineaments of a ‘new G8,’ let alone an alternative to the G7.

Just look at the interlocutors of the five historical BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa): we find a microcosm of the Global South, encompassing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and South America – truly putting the “Global” in the Global South.

Revealingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear messages during the Beijing summit, in sharp contrast to G7 propaganda, were actually addressed to the whole Global South:

– Russia will fulfill its obligations to supply energy and fertilizers.

– Russia expects a good grain harvest – and to supply up to 50 million tons to world markets.

– Russia will ensure passage of grain ships into international waters even as Kiev mined Ukrainian ports.

– The negative situation on Ukrainian grain is artificially inflated.

– The sharp increase in inflation around the world is the result of the irresponsibility of G7 countries, not Operation Z in Ukraine.

– The imbalance of world relations has been brewing for a long time and has become an inevitable result of the erosion of international law.

An alternative system

Putin also directly addressed one of the key themes that the BRICS have been discussing in depth since the 2000s — the design and implementation of an international reserve currency.

“The Russian Financial Messaging System is open for connection with banks of the BRICS countries.”

“The Russian MIR payment system is expanding its presence. We are exploring the possibility of creating an international reserve currency based on the basket of BRICS currencies,” the Russian leader said.

This is inevitable after the hysterical western sanctions post-Operation Z; the total de-dollarization imposed upon Moscow; and increasing trade between BRICS nations. For instance, by 2030, a quarter of the planet’s oil demand will come from China and India, with Russia as the major supplier.

The “RIC” in BRICS simply cannot risk being locked out of a G7-dominated financial system. Even tightrope-walking India is starting to catch the drift.

Who speaks for the ‘international community?’

At its current stage, BRICS represent 40 percent of world population, 25 percent of the global economy, 18 percent of world trade, and contribute over 50 percent for world economic growth. All indicators are on the way up.

Sergey Storchak, CEO of Russian bank VEG, framed it quite diplomatically: “If the voices of emerging markets are not being heard in the coming years, we need to think very seriously about setting up a parallel regional system, or maybe a global system.”

A “parallel regional system” is already being actively discussed between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China, coordinated by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev, who has recently authored a stunning manifesto amplifying his ideas about world economic sovereignty.

Developing the ‘developing world’

What happens in the trans-Eurasian financial front will proceed in parallel with a so far little known Chinese development strategy: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last year.

GDI can be seen as a support mechanism of the overarching strategy – which remains the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of economic corridors interlinking Eurasia all the way to its western peninsula, Europe.

At the High-level Dialogue on Global Development, part of the BRICS summit, the Global South learned a little more about the GDI, an organization set up in 2015.

In a nutshell, the GDI aims to turbo-charge international development cooperation by supplementing financing to a plethora of bodies, for instance the South-South Cooperation Fund, the International Development Association (IDA), the Asian Development Fund (ADF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Priorities include “poverty reduction, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines,” industrialization, and digital infrastructure. Subsequently, a Friends of the GDI group was established in early 2022 and has already attracted over 50 nations.

BRI and GDI should be advancing in tandem, even as Xi himself made it clear during the BRICS summit that “some countries are politicizing and marginalizing the developmental agenda by building up walls and slapping crippling sanctions on others.”

Then again, sustainable development is not exactly the G7’s cup of tea, much less NATO’s.

Seven against the world

The avowed top aim of the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau at the Bavarian Alps is to “project unity” – as in the stalwarts of the collective west (Japan included) united in sustainable and indefinite “support” for the irretrievably failed Ukrainian state.

That’s part of the “struggle against Putin’s imperialism,” but then there’s also “the fight against hunger and poverty, health crisis and climate change,” as German chancellor Scholz told the Bundestag.

In Bavaria, Scholz pushed for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine – a ludicrous concept considering Kiev and its environs might as well be reduced to a puny rump state by the end of 2022. The notion that the G7 may work to “prevent a catastrophic famine,” according to Scholz, reaches a paroxysm of ludicrousness, as the looming famine is a direct consequence of the G7-imposed sanctions hysteria.

The fact that Berlin invited India, Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal as add-ons to the G7, served as additional comic relief.

The Tin Curtain is up

It would be futile to expect from the astonishing collection of mediocrities “united” in Bavaria, under de facto leader of the European Commission (EC), Fuehrer Ursula von der Leyen, any substantial analysis about the breakdown of global supply chains and the reasons that forced Moscow to reduce gas flows to Europe. Instead, they blamed Putin and Xi.

Welcome to the Tin Curtain – a 21^st century reinvention of the Intermarium from the Baltic to the Black Sea, masterminded by the Empire of Lies, complete with western Ukraine absorbed by Poland, the Three Baltic Midgets: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Czechia and even NATO-aspiring Sweden and Finland, all of whom will be protected from “the Russian threat.”

An EU out of control

The role of the EU, lording over Germany, France and Italy inside the G7 is particularly instructive, especially now that Britain is back to the status of an inconsequential island-state.

As many as 60 European ‘directives’ are issued every year. They must be imperatively transposed into internal law of each EU member-state. In most cases, there’s no debate whatsoever.

Then there are more than 10,000 European ‘rulings,’ where ‘experts’ at the European Commission (EC) in Brussels issue ‘recommendations’ to every government, straight out of the neoliberal canon, regarding their expenses, their income and ‘reforms’ (on health care, education, pensions) that must be obeyed.

Thus elections in every single EU member-nation are absolutely meaningless. Heads of national governments – Macron, Scholz, Draghi – are mere executants. No democratic debate is allowed: ‘democracy,’ as with ‘EU values,’ are nothing than smokescreens.

The real government is exercised by a bunch of apparatchiks chosen by compromise between executive powers, acting in a supremely opaque manner.

The EC is totally outside of any sort of control. That’s how a stunning mediocrity like Ursula von der Leyen – previously the worst Minister of Defense of modern Germany – was catapulted upwards to become the current EC Fuhrer, dictating their foreign, energy and even economic policy.

What do they stand for?

From the perspective of the west, the Tin Curtain, for all its ominous Cold War 2.0 overtones, is merely a starter before the main course: hardcore confrontation across Asia-Pacific – renamed “Indo-Pacific” – a carbon copy of the Ukraine racket designed to contain China’s BRI and GDI.

As a countercoup, it’s enlightening to observe how the Chinese foreign ministry now highlights in detail the contrast between BRICS – and BRICS+ – and the imperial AUKUS/Quad/IPEF combo.

BRICS stand for de facto multilateralism; focus on global development; cooperation for economic recovery; and improving global governance.

The US-concocted racket on the other hand, stands for Cold War mentality; exploiting developing countries; ganging up to contain China; and an America-first policy that enshrines the monopolistic “rules-based international order.”

It would be misguided to expect those G7 luminaries gathered in Bavaria to understand the absurdity of imposing a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, for instance. Were that to really happen, Moscow will have no problems fully cutting energy supply to the G7. And if other nations are excluded, the price of the oil and gas they import would drastically increase.

BRICS paving the way forward

So no wonder the future is ominous. In a stunning interview to Belarus state TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summarized how “the west fears honest competition.”

Hence, the apex of cancel culture, and “suppression of everything that contradicts in some way the neoliberal vision and arrangement of the world.” Lavrov also summarized the roadmap ahead, for the benefit of the whole Global South:

“We don’t need a new G8. We already have structures…primarily in Eurasia. The EAEU is actively promoting integration processes with the PRC, aligning China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian integration plans. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are taking a close look at these plans. A number of them are signing free trade zone agreements with the EAEU. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also part of these processes… There is one more structure beyond the geographic borders of Eurasia.”

“It is BRICS. This association is relying less and less on the Western style of doing business, and on Western rules for international currency, financial and trade institutions. They prefer more equitable methods that do not make any processes depend on the dominant role of the dollar or some other currency. The G20 fully represents BRICS and five more countries that share the positions of BRICS, while the G7 and its supporters are on the other side of the barricades.”

“This is a serious balance. The G20 may deteriorate if the West uses it for fanning up confrontation. The structures I mentioned (SCO, BRICS, ASEAN, EAEU and CIS) rely on consensus, mutual respect and a balance of interests, rather than a demand to accept unipolar world realities.”

Tin Curtain? More like Torn Curtain.

Europe’s Third Attempt at Suicide and Generation Z+

June 27, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

‘The next war in Europe will be between Russia and Fascism, except that Fascism will be called Democracy.’

Fidel Castro, c. 1992

Introduction

Europe is a serial suicide. The first attempt began in Sarajevo in 1914 and finished in Versailles in 1919. The second began a generation later in Warsaw in 1939 and ended in Berlin in 1945. Having very nearly succeeded at the second attempt (it missed atomic bombs by mere months), Europe sobered up and slowed down, waiting till the centenary of 1914 before it tried for the third time. This attempt began in Kiev, again in Eastern Europe, in 2014 and is continuing in the Special Military Operation (SMO). At every attempt Europe has lost. The first time it lost three empires (the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the German), the second time two Empires, the fatally weakened British and French, so ensuring the supremacy of the American Empire in Europe, as in the rest of the world.

What will Europe lose this time? It will lose the only Empire remaining – the EU. When? Only some time after the conclusion of the SMO. Now, it would be foolish to predict with exactitude when that, which is the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide, will be. It could all be over in early July. Alternatively it could drag on for years. However, both those outcomes are extreme possibilities and there are other possibilities inbetween. Nevertheless, some tendencies are clear. It is only the extent and speed at which they will progress that is uncertain. In any case, whatever happens in the Ukraine, Europe will be reformatted. It will never be the same again. The seed sown by the Western elite in Kiev in 2014 is being reaped today in the harvest of division, discontent and poverty in Europe.

If we look at the three aims of the Special Military Operation, we can see that the first and second aims, the liberation of the Donbass and demilitarisation, are both 75% done, despite new arrivals of Western arms to prolong the agony. However, the reality is also that the operation has had to be much extended from the Donbass to the east and south of the Ukraine and there we are not even 50% done. However, the third aim, the denazification of the Ukraine, has not even begun and cannot begin until the murderous Zelensky regime has been replaced with a government which actually cherishes the independence and cultural traditions of the Ukraine. Then it will no longer be a servile chimpanzee of the LGBT West and its Nulands who, very politely speaking, have no time for Europe.

Military

Some have criticised the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine. After four months, they say, not even the whole of the Donbass has yet been liberated. Such critics should get out of their armchairs and go and fight against NATO. We would soon see how fast they would go. Why has progress been ‘slow’? Firstly, because though the Allied Forces are small in size, they are fighting against the vast bulk of the Kiev Army, which has been trained, retrained, supplied and resupplied and dug into its fortified positions by NATO over eight years. Secondly, because the Allies are trying to avoid civilian casualties and of course casualties to themselves. That is not easy when Kiev is using civilians as human shields and shelling from residential areas. The Allies will not carpet-bomb like the West. There is no hurry.

However, with the very recent events in Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, the gateway to the whole of Central and Western Ukraine is being opened. Thus, we read the report on 25 June: ‘The Office of the President ordered the transfer of all reserves from the Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv direction for a counterattack in the Severodonetsk direction’. In other words, Kiev has only reserves left and it wants to transfer all of them. This sounds like desperation – the end is near. Judging by the quality of Kiev’s reserves so far, this will be a walkover. And that firstly presumes that the reserves will be willing to be massacred. And that secondly presumes that they can be transferred when all around the roads are occupied by Allied troops, or are controlled by Russian radar, artillery, drones and aircraft.

Most significantly of all, this means that Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv will be left more or less defenceless, without even reserves. According to serious Western data, Ukrainian military losses are about 200,000 killed with nearly three quarters of military equipment and ammunition destroyed. In just four months. This is catastrophic. If even Western spies from MI6, the BRD and Poland say this, then there is little future or hope for the US puppets in Kiev. We can only expect military collapse and the formation of a new government, authentically pro-Ukrainian (that is anti-American) and therefore pro-Russian. What happens after the liberation of the Ukraine? The liberation of Moldova? Of the Baltics? We do not know. But if aggressive NATO/EU sabre-rattling continues, all is possible.

Economic, Political and Ideological

As we know, the Western anti-Russian sanctions, have been a self-imposed economic disaster, an own goal. Blowback has been nasty. Dedollarisation is happening. Pay in roubles, please. Now. Food, fertiliser, oil, gas, all are rocketing in price, and it is not winter. Popular discontent and street demonstrations in Western Europe are mounting. In France the Rothschild candidate Macron has lost control of the French Parliament to the left and to the right. In the UK the ‘delusional’ (the word of members of his own Party) Johnson (a man condemned by his own as ‘an opportunistic journalist who has at his heart a moral vacuum’) is seen as a liability, who will lead the Tory Party to annihilation in any election. We will not speak here of other nonentities like Scholz, Draghi, Trudeau and Biden.

Then there is the formation of alternatives to the Western bloc. A new G8/BRICS+? Russia has seen plenty of discreet and not so discreet support from China, India, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, Africa (from Egypt to South Africa), Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Argentina, Hungary…. That is, from the aptly-named ‘emerging’ world on all five Continents, from those who have raw materials and manufacturing infrastructure. They want to emerge from the ruins of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The isolated West, the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, has few friends outside its inward-looking little world. There are just a few occupied vassals in Asia, like Israel, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, who are forced to buy Western arms in order to stop themselves being liberated from themselves, and that is it.

Even the mercenaries of the State-controlled Western media are beginning to go back on their State-paid lies. They are used to turning everything on its head, to inverting it all. Thus, the Russian Army was composed of ‘demoralised and untrained raw conscripts’, who had suffered ‘massive losses’ and ‘lacked fuel and ammunition’, ‘raped children and murdered’, were ‘in full retreat’ and bombed and shelled ‘residential areas and civilians’. Just change the word ‘Russian’ to ‘Kiev’ and we are a lot nearer the truth. Does anybody believe these media lies any more? Surely only the living dead? It must be embarrassing for these hacks who have been telling, or rather were ordered to tell, the opposite of the truth. They used to report their dreams as reality. Now they have to report reality – their worst nightmares.

Conclusion: The Age of Empires Is Over

After the Western defeats, or rather routs, in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO has no military or political future. In fact, it should have been abolished after the fall of the USSR. The Ukraine (or whatever it will be called in whatever borders it will have when its liberation is complete) is Russian. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The expansion of NATO into Asia? What a joke. Taiwan is Chinese, as will be all the Western Pacific. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The American Century which began in February/March 1917 with the palace revolt by corrupt aristocrats and generals in the Russian Empire, carefully orchestrated from London and New York, is over. Europe no longer needs to attempt suicide, let alone succeed. You are free to restore the sovereignty of your nation states.

The fact is that the Age of Empires is over. 1917 signalled the beginning of this. In 1991 the Red Star (USSR) Empire collapsed. Today the White Star (USSA) Empire, with its Twelve-Star EU (USSE) vassal Empire in tow, is collapsing, and for exactly the same reason: because nobody believes in their ideologies any more. Both Communism and Capitalism have failed. Now is the Age of Free Alliances of Sovereign Nations. What is the future of Europe after its third failed attempt at suicide? It is in reintegrating the Sovereignty of Eurasia, protected by the Russian resource umbrella. The Atlantic never united Europe, it divided Europe. If those who live across the Atlantic want to rediscover from us how to start living normal lives again, they can. But it will be on our terms, those of our Sovereignty, not on theirs.

We have spoken of the Special Military Operation as the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide. We have said that Europe will never be the same again after it. This is because, unless Europe is really serious this time about suicide (and it has managed to avoid it twice before), this Operation Z is going to split up the tyrannical Western world, EU and UK Europe, from the USA. It is Operation Z+. And who are we, those who will survive? We are Generation Z+. We are those who will come ‘out of great tribulation’ and survive. We are those who are going to live in the real Global world, not in the Western bubble Globalist world. We are the real Europeans of ancient and new European history, who refused to commit suicide, the Sovereign Europeans. Reality is dawning at last.

Some Replies to Some Comments on Recent Articles

June 26, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

1. Errors

I do apologise for the rare error which comes from not checking the text enough times. For example, Kuleba is of course the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, not the Minister of the Interior. Thank you, readers, for any factual corrections!

2. Why did the Russian Revolution happen, if everything was going so well before 1917?

There never was a Revolution. It is a myth of Western/Soviet history. But there was a mutiny of the ruling class, effectively a revolt of the uprooted, English- and French-speaking elite, or aristocracy, against Russia. They had great wealth and so they wanted what comes next – power. The people, apart from the bread and circus mob, did not follow, but were too weak and disorganised to resist. The mutiny was organised, abetted and aided by foreign powers, above all by the British from their Embassy in the then capital in Saint Petersburg.

Empires always use the same techniques. Just as the Romans had their client-states and proconsuls or governors (in Jerusalem it was Pontius Pilate) and took the children of the local elite hostage by ‘educating’ (= indoctrinating/ westernising) them in their home capitals and main cities, so did Imperial Britain, and today so does the USA. Local treachery goes a long way when you give all the traitors in the capital a lot of dollars (remember how they flew planes stuffed with billions of dollars into Baghdad?) and some infrastructure (as in a recent classic case, Kiev in 2014). However, do not blame foreign powers entirely – no foreign power can do anything if there is not local treachery. But you can always find locals who will sell their souls for a mess of pottage/dollars.

3. Nazism

Although back on 29 March, in my very first writing for The Saker, What Does Nazism Mean?, I explained what Nazism is, there is still confusion. In speaking of Nazism in the Ukraine, the Russian Federation is not speaking of Nazism as a phenomenon that existed for twelve years during the Third Reich and was marked, by other things, by its persecution of the Jews. Nazism, and so denazification, is something far greater, far more ancient, far more profound.

Nazism is the millennial ideology of the (imagined) Superiority of the Western/Westernised World, the ideology of the ‘master race’. It began with the First Reich of the Carolingians of 800-1806, the foundation act of the Western ‘Middle Ages’. And it was repeated in the Second Reich of the Prussian militarists of 1871-1918, long before the Third Reich. Thus, we can call also the Normans Nazis, the Crusaders Nazis, the Conquistadors Nazis, British merchants in India – Nazis. The largely British genocide of Native Americans was a Nazi act, as was the Belgian genocide of the Congolese, as was the Japanese genocide in Chinese Nanking, as was the Hitlerian holocaust of the Slavs (30 million), as was the US genocide of the Vietnamese. Today the USA and its UK/EU/Canadian/Australian etc vassals, ‘the Collective West’, are the Fourth Reich.

Yes, it is true that throughout history probably all countries or ethnic groups or tribes or clans have at some point attacked another country in order to try and grab its resources. The vital difference here is that Western attacks are not one-offs out of greed. They are institutionalised, systematic, justified as part of a millennial ideology, and they are global. Various words have been used to justify this Nazi ideology, from Catholicism to Protestantism, from Spanish to British, from German to Israeli, from freedom to democracy, and from American to Woke. It is all the same thing, still the same evil banditry and brutal thuggery of organised violence behind the excuse. The ‘Cancel Russia’ bookburning of the 2020s is just as Nazi as Hitler’s bookburning of the 1930s. It is the same Anti-Culture of the same Anti-Civilization. Whatever tag you want to give it, ‘Western’, ‘Nazi’, ‘European’, ‘American’, ‘Woke’, it is ultimately all the same Satanism.

This is why the conflict in the Ukraine, which could so easily have remained a purely local affair in the Donbass and been over in 2014, spread to the whole of Novorossija (the east and south of the ‘Ukraine’) and has spread throughout Eastern and Western Europe. Russia’s primary task, indeed mission, and many of us knew this from the very outset and indeed have believed in it all our lives, is to free Europe of ‘Nazism’, to ‘denazify’ Europe. (China can deal with Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and, quite easily, Africa; Russia may deal, quite easily, with Latin America. As for the USA and Canada, like Israel, they will have to be quarantined, isolated and left to rot until they decontaminate themselves, like corpses which over time only leave bleached bones.

This denazification will hopefully chiefly be political, economic and ideological – but it may in some cases also have to be military, as in the Ukraine. This is what Operation Z is about. In writing these very words, I am very modestly taking part in Operation Z and you, in reading these words, are also taking part in Operation Z. Z is the Great Liberation. We have been waiting for this moment all our lives, whether we realised it or not.

4. What are the sources for the article about Russia before the ‘Revolution’, Myths from the Past and the Third Incarnation of Russia since 1721?

There are few sources in English. This is deliberate. Few things resembling the truth about Russia get written or translated – which is of course part of the systematic censorship of Russia. The bibliography below represents only the tip of the iceberg, therefore I would rather call it an essential reading list:

In Russian:

The Diaries of Nicholas II, in 3 Volumes, ed. S. V. Mironenko, Moscow, 2013

Alferiev E. E., Tsar Nicholas II as a Man of Strong Will, New York-Jordanville, 1983

Belousov P. (compiled), The Tsar and Russia, Otchij Dom, Moscow, 2017 (Contains reprints of many important articles by Solonevich, Nekrasov, Obruchev, Obolensky, Pavlov, Tikhmenev, Stremoukhov, Zajtsev and others)

Bokhanov A. N., Rasputin, the Anatomy of a Myth, Moscow, 2000

Bokhanov A. N., Nicholas II, Moscow, Veche, 2008

Borisiuk A. A., The History of Russia Which They Ordered To Be Forgotten, Moscow, Veche 2018 (2^nd edition). (Statistical Facts)

Brazol B.L., The Reign of Tsar Nicholas II in Facts and Figures (1894-1917), New York, 1959

Dolmatov V., The Sovereign, Twenty Three Steps Up, Dostoinstvo, Moscow 2015

Fomin S., Gregory Rasputin, An Investigation, 9 Volumes, Moscow, Forum, 2007-2015

Gubanov V. (compiled), The Holy Tsar Nicholas II and the New Russian Martyrs, Stavros, Moscow, 2004

Kapkov K.G., The Spiritual World of Emperor Nicholas II and His Family, Moscow-Livadia, 2017

Kobylin V. The Anatomy of a Betrayal, the Sources of the Anti-Monarchist Conspiracy, Saint Petersburg, 1998 (reprint)

Mirek A., The Emperor Nicholas II and the Destiny of Orthodox Russia, Spiritual Enlightenment, Moscow, 2013

Mironova T., From Beneath the Lie, Vesti, Saint Petersburg, 2005

Multatuli P.V., The Foreign Policy of Emperor Nicholas II (1894-1917), Moscow, 2012

Multatuli P.V., Myths and the Truth about the Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II, Ekaterinburg, 2013

Multatuli P.V., Nicholas II, The Way of the Cross, Smolin, Moscow, 2013

Multatuli P.V., Emperor Nicholas II, The Man and the Monarch, and, Emperor Nicholas II the Martyr, Veche, Moscow, 2018

Multatuli P.V., Emperor Nicholas II, The Tragedy of a Misunderstood Sovereign, Smolin, Moscow, 2018

Oldenburg S. S., The Reign of Nicholas II, Saint Petersburg, Petropol, 1991 (reprint)

Platonov O., Nicholas II, His Life and Reign, Saint Petersburg, 1999

Platonov O., Nicholas II in His Secret Correspondence, Algorithm, Moscow, 2005

Platonov O., A Life for the Tsar, Rodnaya Strana, Moscow, 2015

Reshetnikov L., To Return to Russia, Moscow, 2013

Shargunov Archpriest A., The Miracles of the Royal Martyrs, 2 Volumes, Moscow, 2000

Shargunov Archpriest A., The Tsar, Zlatoust, Moscow, 2013

Zhevakhov N.D. Memoirs, Saint Petersburg, 2014

In English:

Den L., The Real Tsaritsa, Nabu Public Domain Reprints, Undated

Maylunas A. and Mironenko S., A Lifelong Passion, Nicholas and Alexandra, Weidenfeld, London, 1996 (Their Correspondence)

Nekrasov G., Nicholas II as Military Commander, Sovereign Journal No 5, Royal Russia, 2017

Rogger H., Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia, Berkley, 1986

Romanova Olga Alexandrovna, 25 Chapters of My Life, Librario, Kinloss, 2009 (reprint)

Vorres I., The Last Grand Duchess, Olga Alexandrovna, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1964

Wilton E. and Sokolov N., The Last Days of the Romanovs, General Books, Memphis, 2012 (reprint)

In French:

Chavelsky G., J’ai Vecu La Fin de la Russie Imperiale, Editions Singulieres, Sete, 2011. (A very good translation and a portrait of the traitors surrounding Tsar Nicholas, written by one of them)

Gilliard P., Le Tragique Destin de Nicolas II et de sa famille, Payot, Paris, 1929

Jacoby Jean, Le Tsar Nicholas II et la Revolution, Fayard, Paris, 1931

Joukoff Archpriest B. (compiled), Nicolas II, Le Dernier Empereur Orthodoxe, Villemoisson, 2015

Loupan V., Nicholas II, Le Saint Tsar, Syrtes, Paris, 2001

5. Who am I?

I am the Russian Orthodox rector of a very large parish in Europe. I have served in many countries in Western Europe and have lived in Russia and the Ukraine. I have also worked as a lecturer in Russian and European history and politics. Enough said.

Sitrep Operation Z: Open Thread

June 26, 2022

Source

by the Saker Staff

Wow, too much information out there in addition to the world happenings.  Today and tomorrow we have the G7 in Germany and NATO on June 29-30 in Madrid.  Various threats will surface from these two meetings as well as childish foot-stomping and brave statements on steriods.  Mr Lavrov’s short statement has relevance: ‘We have few illusions that EU’s Russophobic policies will change’ – FM Lavrov

We leave you with one image

And on the battlefront, the news is coming in so fast that it is almost impossible to keep track of.  Of main importance on the front line and from the Russian MoD report:

• On June 25, the cities of Severodonetsk and Borovskoye, the settlements of Voronovo and Sirotino passed under control of the Lugansk People’s Republic. The localities liberated from the Kiev regime are inhabited by about 108,000 people. Total area of the liberated territory is about 145 square kilometres.
• Success of the Russian army and the units of people militia of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics considerably diminish moral and psychological condition of the Ukrainian army personnel.
• In 30th Mechanised Brigade deployed near Artyomovsk, there are mass cases of alcohol abuse, drug use and unauthorised abandonment of combat positions.

If you take a look at that MoD Report it is becoming so clear that the attrition rate now is counted in brigades.

Attacks have resulted in neutralising 65th, 66th mechanised brigades and 46th Airmobile Brigade from AFU strategic reserves that were finishing their preparation at those training grounds.

Take a look at Larry Johnson’s latest: “Some die hard neo-cons continue to manifest their ignorance of military affairs by pointing to Russia’s slow progress in taking Severodonetsk as evidence of Russia’s incompetent, weak army. What they fail to understand is that Russia was trying to avoid killing the civilians still inside Severodonetsk, who were being used as human shields by the Ukrainians. Putin and the Russian commanders are placing a higher value on saving civilians rather than unleashing their full military might in order to show the world what they can really do. This is a remarkably mature military strategy.”  https://sonar21.com/even-the-uks-sky-news-is-reporting-on-the-ukrainian-debacle-in-the-donbas/

• Also of note is the strikes on Kiev from the Caspian Sea & from the airspace of Belarus. The Russian Federation used Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers. They launched X-101 missiles, which can fly up to 5500 km. At the same time, Russian warships fired up to 50 missiles at targets all over Ukraine — targeting Ukrop bases, manufacturing sites of air to air missiles in Kiev disguised as “residential buildings” & other military targets

We leave this for you as an open thread for reporting updates.

Map:  The Readovka Map is up to date.  If you go to this page and click on the map itself, there is a bigger and better quality version.

Sitrep Operation Z: 💥 Theme Kalibr Kaboom!

June 19, 2022

Source

By Saker Staff

This is about the most significant of the last two quiet days. But the silence is over. Some may remember that Military Summary said about two days ago, that there is little to report as there is very little movement on the front. Wait for it, I think we now know why.

Let’s take some extracts, somewhat cleaned up, from the Russian MoD report today which is noticeably longer than the previous reports.

https://t.me/mod_russia_en/2282

https://t.me/mod_russia_en/2283

At 12.30 PM, Kalibr high-precision long-distance sea-based missiles were launched at a command post of the Ukrainian troops near the village of Shirokaya Dacha (Dnepropetrovsk region).

At that moment a working meeting of the commanders of the Aleksandriya operational-strategic group was in progress.

More than 50 generals and officers of the AFU was eliminated. This included the General Staff of the Kakhovka group, airborne assault troops and units that operate towards Nikolayev and Zaporozhye.

(Also confirmed by RT: https://www.rt.com/russia/557428-50-ukrainian-generals-officers-killed-russia/ )

▫️At 08.20 AM, Kalibr high-precision long-distance missiles destroyed 10 M777 155-mm howitzers and up to 20 armoured combat vehicles delivered by the West to the Kiev regime over the past 10 days that were located in a transformer plant in Nikolayev.

And further on in that same report, we see the results of AFU friendly fire, destroying about 40 of their own.

❗️Big losses of the AFU in manpower force the Ukrainian command to involve unprepared personnel in combats, despite their lack of necessary skills in using armament and military equipment.

▫️At 01.30 PM, 2 Su-25 assault fighters of the Ukrainian Air Force launched an attack at the positions of its units near Shirokoye (Dnepropetrovsk region).

Mr Putin’s world changing address at the SPIEF supplies another KABOOM with his announcement that The era of the unipolar world is over. The future world order, currently in progress, will be formed by strong sovereign states. This is nothing less than declaring victory.

As to the front line, after checking a number of sources, Military Summary from end of the day yesterday still brings the most accurate details.

Do go and read the two sections of the Russian MoD report. It is quite stunning. And then for some color, scroll through Intel Slava Z – https://t.me/intelslava/31469

And for a laugh, see Liz Truss: ❗️UK Foreign Office Says Ukraine Should Return to Negotiations with Russia https://t.me/rtnews/25747

(How the worm has turned and how are they trying to rescue something from their failed operation!)

As to the future, we have the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin:

🇷🇺Russia and the republics need to liberate the whole of Ukraine, including Kiev and Lviv, says Denis Pushilin at SPIEF-2022.

So, now we know what the thinking is and we know why it was quiet for two days. I do not put it beyond the realm of possibility that the Russian MoD has new instructions, and this already is being acted upon in terms of current actions, shaping future actions. This war is not over unless the Ukraine collapses or further tranches of 50 at a time command and control of the AFU gets taken out with one fine Kaboom of a Kalibr.

Sitrep Operation Z: The Great WalkBack

June 13, 2022

Source

By Amarynth

Recall:  We have no idea what the Russian end-point is, except for this part of the SMO, demilitarization and denazification of the two Donbass Republics.

The blogger gpovanman summarizes the last week as follows:

The last few days have seen no real breakthroughs in the Ukrainian conflict, yet with Russia not planning that there would be, this comes as no surprise. There are however enough other matters to give us an idea of what the future may bring. https://gpovanman.wordpress.com/2022/06/13/a-week-in-view/

In the broader environment, just about everyone in the EU and in the US, and in NATO is trying to walk backward with another change of narrative.  So, (1), old Kissenger was dusted off again, and he pontificates:  “The question will now be how to end that war. At its end a place has to be found for Ukraine and a place has to be found for Russia – if we don’t want Russia to become an outpost of China in Europe.”

(Did I say that China is heating up?  And that the warmongers are now taking a new look at China?.  It is inconceivable for this western axis of evil and empire of lies, that we can live without a big war because that will lead to faster western implosion.  Take a look at the address by General Wei Fenghe, State Councilor; Minister of National Defense, China.  He does not mince words and says clearly that China will fight http://thesaker.is/iiss-shangri-la-dialogue-2022-chinas-vision-for-regional-order/).

(2) Some talking head with the memorable name of Sikorsky, a member of the EU and a previous Polish Defense Minister, is trying to talk up the possibility that the west could supply the Ukraine with nuclear weapons to defeat Russia.  But the talk of a glorious victory of the Ukraine is diminishing.

(3) Stoltenberg from NATO supplies us with this comment, but it is all up to the Ukraine he says.  (Remember the notes from previous sitreps that the Ukraine is now fast becoming an orphan.  To add to that, everyone is sick and tired of Zelenski.)

“Peace is possible,” says Stoltenberg. “The only question is what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory, how much independence, how much sovereignty…are you willing to sacrifice for peace?”

The news for these august gentlemen is simple.  You have sugar spun cotton candy in your heads.  You cannot appease Russia with some territory that they already have, or will take.  Its not yours to give.   Russia will decide exactly what happens to the Ukraine, how, and when.   The Great WalkBack will make no difference to Russia’s decisions here as the core issue is a restructuring of the complete European security structural apparatus, in such a way that Russia is not threatened.  The next steps from Russia will give us more insight into how they will accomplish this.

Also take a look at Andrei Martyanov who went on quite a rant detailing yet again exactly the Russian military strength:  http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/06/what-worries-me-really.html

The Russian Foreign office released this card for Russia day yesterday.

It says “we asked them nicely not to expand eastward” next to headware of the Teutonic Knights, Poles, Napoleon and the Germans. And an empty box to fill in with the Current Thing.

Brian Berletic notes from a Guardian article:

“Ukraine fears western support will fade as media loses interest in the war”  “Costs and casualties are rising but Kyiv warns that the conflict with Russia is becoming normalised in people’s minds, at home and abroad.” (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/12/ukraine-fears-western-support-will-fade-as-media-loses-interest-in-the-war))

Berletic continues:  “IF” Ukraine’s conflict was really as important as its engineers and sponsors claim, this wouldn’t be the case. The West only poses as having a moral imperative, propped up with PR stunts.  Russia actually has one – and having a moral imperative is one of the KEY prerequisites of winning any conflict.

While the Great WalkBack, which is just another pretext and attempt to change the narrative, is gaining steam,  Russian forces are gaining city by city, area by area, deliberately, resolutely, not wavering and now moving faster.  The last estimate that I am aware of, is that Lugansk is 95% cleared, whereas in the Donbass Republic there still is some work to do with a 50% of the area still under battle or planned to be under battle.

Yet, we see more and more comments that the front has collapsed, that the Ukrainian forces hang their heads on their chinstraps and that the only reason for the continuance of battle is that most of the Ukrainian forces find it impossible to conceive of the concept of laying down their arms.

This is exactly why the Military Summary Channel is still a very good source because he does not pretend that what is left of the defeated Ukrainian forces, cannot yet fight.

Kadyrov’s forces are being increased if you pay attention to his channel. https://t.me/RKadyrov_95  As the Ukrainian forces get decimated, we know their tactic is to move into schools and other civilian areas and literally use civilians as fire screens.  To clear these areas is very fine work for Kadyrov and his men and they excel at it.

The detail as of the end of the 12th day of June:

Enjoy your discussion as we slowly move from this phase of active SMO to the next with not even a hint from Russia as to what it will be.

Sitrep Operation Z: Beginning of this End (but there are other beginnings and other ends)

June 10, 2022

Source

by Amarynth

The SMO is beginning to end.  We can classify it now as a perfect real world training ground for Russian military and is in its final stages.   The ‘punitive war’ by their own actions, is heating up in Europe, and the world war between a single polar hegemon and a multi-polar world.  At the Saker Blog we will continue with presenting good sources until the last battle is fought, but we go with Martyanov, that the minutae is almost boring now.

We start with Military Summary for end of June 9th.  This is an important one as it visually shows the Russian progress.  He also on various occasions talks about collapse of the Ukrainian front lines and describes how that is happening.  He also updates on new Russian weapons being used.

https://rumble.com/v17wh8w-ukraine.-military-summary-and-analysis-09.06.2022.html

Then, it is good to take a look at Brian Berletic, whose audience is more toward the English speaking world.  His expectation still is a long war. This of course is debatable.  The take-away from Berletic is Russian Gains, Ukrainian Grain, Kiev Admits Losses.

Follow from a Berletic recommendation to catch up with the Ukrainian Commander who defected to Russia.

Also follow Andrey Martyanov here:  http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/06/larch-defines-moral-point-larrys-friend.html

He is hoping to get a video out on the issue of both losses and operations of 4 SU-57 which have been confirmed by Ria as fully netcentric (in Russian), and effective against Ukie Air Defense.

The biggest problems remaining is the Ukrainians using civilians as human shields and the shelling into Donetsk

Both of these will reduce as the Ukrainians get dead.

On the three mercenaries that received the death penalty by firing squad, the Russian FM:

The foreign fighters in Donetsk who were sentenced to death are not legal combatants and therefore are not protected by international humanitarian law, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

According to the official, the UK is yet to reach out to the breakaway state’s authorities, regarding two British citizen’s fate.

Liz Truss?  What can we say?  She is proclaiming loudly that they are prisoners of war.   So, it is easy to reason that if she recognizes to British fighters are prisoners of war, legally, who is it that is fighting against Russia?

Ruble Strengthens again .. Despite Central Bank Cutting Interest Rates

The US dollar fell below 57 rubles on Moscow’s Exchange.

The Euro also slumped under 60 rubles – even as the Central Bank cut interest rates 1.5 percentage points.

Finally, a horrible delight or a stark naked expression of Russian feelings.  This is the real Russian sentiment to the Ukronazis from a Russian teenager.  (Oofff.. its wild!)

https://odysee.com/$/embed/russia-russian-teenager-on-ukrainians/217f5c5011a79abc84a2e8bc7799d1321a7a1e4c

Sitrep Operation Z: Back into The Grind while the penny drops in Europe

June 06, 2022

Source

by Saker Staff

Weapons incoming

Russia have struck a major artery for the shipment of NATO weapons from Europe via the Beskidy railway tunnel. The Beskidy Tunnel is a railway tunnel under the Volovets Pass in the Carpathian Mountains. Confirmed by Ukraine itself.

High-precision long-range air-based missiles of the Russian Aerospace Forces have destroyed industrial buildings of the smithy-mechanical plant on the outskirts of Lozovaya (Kharkov Region), where the AFU armoured vehicles were being rebuilt and repaired.

The consequences of the arrival at the Darnitsa car repair plant, which was converted for the repair of equipment and the preparation of Polish tanks for shipment to the front https://t.me/intelslava/30873

Russian Mod states that an An-26 military transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force carrying weapons and military equipment was shot down in the Odessa region.

More here

Operation Z+: On Raising the Iron Curtain Which Hangs Over Europe

June 05, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

From Kaliningrad on the Baltic to Odessa on the Black Sea an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the American sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to American influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from the Great Satan in Washington, cutting off that dark and tiny Western world from the teeming billions of toiling humanity, in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, indeed all the Muslim World, all Africa and all Latin America. It is they who are now looking with hope to Russia, to her light to free the world, to her wheat to feed the world, and to her oil to warm the world.

The Fulton Speech II

‘And I heard a voice in the midst of the beasts saying, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine’.

The Apocalypse 6:6

Introduction: 6 June 1945

There is a type of history known as ‘What if History’. Its correct name is ‘Suppositional History’. Quite simply, it deals with logical but parallel universes of the imagination and asks, ‘What if/suppose X had not happened, and Y had happened instead, what would Z be like today? One jump of the imagination and we can arrive in a very logical, quite plausible, yet actually non-existent, world. One of these what-if questions is: What would have happened if the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ (British, Americans and Canadians) had not invaded Normandy on 6 June 1944 or else had been repelled? The answer we come to is that the Red Army would not have stopped in Berlin in May 1945. It would have gone on, leaving Berlin and the suicide of Hitler far behind them, and almost unopposed, it would have gone on to the very coasts of Western Europe.

Then the phrase ‘The Normandy Landings’ would have had a very different meaning. 6 June 1945 would have looked very different from 6 June 1944. Ironically, the fact that D-Day happened means that Western Europe was never liberated from the Nazi mentality (1). In other words it was never freed from that bizarre ideology and mentality of Western Supremacism, which declares that ‘The West is Best’. In 2022 we are still paying the price for this failure to finish World War II. This is why it is absurd to talk of World War III; World War II has not finished yet (2). Yet, perhaps some of us will one day see Russian troops liberating Europe, not only as far as Paris as in 1814, but as far as Normandy and even beyond, to the islands across the sea, to what the ancients called ‘Ultima Thule’.

Operation Z

Today’s conflict in the Ukraine would have been over by now, if the West had not constantly escalated it, continually creating new provocations and refusing to allow their puppet regime in Kiev to surrender. As a result, the Russian Federation Forces and Allies are having to destroy not only Kiev Army military equipment but also swathes of NATO equipment, brought in from Western Europe and ultimately even from the USA. Once that equipment, much of it obsolete, has been used up, destroyed by Russian missiles, NATO will be on the run. So what could happen then? Some will object, but the Russian Federation only wanted to liberate the Donbass? Was it then lying? Did it want to occupy all the Ukraine after all or even go further?

No, it was not lying, but because of the host of Western-inspired provocations, such as cutting off water and power to the Crimea, the Federation is being obliged to occupy not only the Russian-speaking East, but also the Russian-speaking South of the Ukraine. Moreover, since the North and the West of the Ukraine are being sent new and threatening weapons (a lot had already been supplied in the years and months before the Special Operation, in preparation for the Ukrainian campaign to genocide the Donbass and invade the Crimea in early March 2022), they too will have to be dealt with in some way or other. Since so many millions of anti-Russian Ukrainians have left the North and the West of the Ukraine for the West, the Russian task may no longer be so difficult. Demilitarisation means what it says – destroying everything that NATO sends, however that plays out.

The latest news is that the idiotic and ignorant British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, now wants to NATO-ise Moldova. So that too will have to be cleared. Since the total strength of the Moldovan Army, many of whom are pro-Russian anyway, is 5,000, it should not be difficult. But why stop there? If the Ukraine and Moldova can be cleared by the end of 2022, which is possible, there comes 2023. As we have mentioned previously, we have the concept of Operation Z+. What does that mean? It means the demilitarisation and denazification of the whole world, beginning with the small but densely-populated European Peninsula.

This means not only liberating the peoples of the present EU from crushing ‘defence’ (= offence) costs, which have so impoverished its peoples for so long. Above all it means internal liberation, ridding the peoples of Europe of the millennial parasite of the Nazi ideology and mentality, with which they have been so infected by their elite that it has become an unconscious but integral part of Western culture. This is so much so that they do not even realise that they are Nazis and would be shocked by the mere suggestion. Yet, it is precisely this disease of Western Supremacism that has deformed, twisted, brainwashed, manipulated and deluded the Western world for so long.

Of course, such a highly ambitious project cannot happen just like that. We are talking about slow, progressive and generational change, and by no means necessarily by military means. Here below, as an example, is a 44-year programme. This is not at all realistic in its precision (timetables never work – reality takes over), but it does set a sort of guideline or target to move towards. And all is possible, once the Ukraine has been delivered from the bonds of Satan. The bonds of Satan, after all, are the meaning of the flying of the Ukrainian flag in the Collective West and its use, for instance, on Twitter and Facebook accounts. Let us explain:

Those who have little concept of where the Ukraine is, or the fact that this artificial hotchpotch of an ‘independent’ country (in fact, a US colony) has only existed for some thirty years and that it has oppressed and exiled millions of people and murdered tens of thousands in the name of its Nazi ideology, do know one thing: Flying a Ukrainian flag means displaying their own self-interest – the Ukrainian flag represents the flag of their personal, though usually quite unconscious, Nazi ideology of Western Supremacism (3). Once the Ukraine has been cleansed by Operation Z, somewhere they know that they will be cleansed next. They fear that cleansing. The coming of reality will terrify the deluded with the frightening words: after Z comes Z+.

Operation Z+

1. 2022: The Liberation of the ‘Ukraine’ and Moldova

Nobody knows when the demilitarisation of what will remain of the old Ukraine will be complete. The old Ukraine could collapse in weeks, with a military coup against the puppet-traitor Zelensky, or it could take a year or even more. We make no forecasts. At the moment NATO is escalating the conflict even further, but from the very outset this always was a proxy war between Washington and Moscow. In any case, it seems as if a military government will be required for the future Ukraine (population 15 million?) in its new borders. Ukrainian civilian governments, led by Non-Ukrainian oligarchs and their puppets, have all been utterly corrupt, to the benefit and the intention of the West.

Nobody knows what will happen in the far west of the Ukraine. Will the three provinces of Volyn, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk return to Poland? Or perhaps more than three will leave? Will so-called ‘Transcarpathia’ (a nonsensical name – it is Kiev that is across the Carpathians), or to call it by its proper names, Carpatho-Russia/Subcarpathian Rus/Ruthenia, return to Hungary or Slovakia, or will it become part of the Russian Federation? Moldova, which has nearly half of its four million population abroad, in exile, is utterly corrupt, making it the poorest country in Europe and ensuring that mass emigration. This problem too will surely have to be dealt with.

2. 2023-2026: The Liberation of the Baltic States

Physically, the tiny and unviable Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, could be conquered and demilitarised swiftly. However, their ‘refascistisation’ under NATO/Nazi US-colonial governments, their deindustrialisation (forcing some 40% of the population to emigrate) and the sadistic oppression of their Russian minorities are all problems that will have to be dealt with. These countries will take time to denazify, even though their population is today barely four million.

3. 2027-2030: The Liberation of the Eastern Balkans

Once the utterly corrupt, US-installed elites of Romania and Bulgaria have been dealt with and NATO terrorist equipment removed, these countries can return to normality.

4. 2031-2034: The Liberation of the Western Balkans

The problems of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania were not only found to be insoluble by the West, the West made them far worse. There must be solutions for maltreated Serbia and Bosnia. Croat and Muslim parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina could be exchanged with Croatia for East Slavonia, which must be returned to Serbia. Some population exchanges would be necessary. Serbia and Montenegro will reunite, once the pro-US traitors of the elite have been removed. Slovenia presents no problem as it is homogeneous. North Macedonia is now an independent country.

However, there remains the problem of Kosovo, divided between Serbians and Albanians. Only great investment and prosperity in the huge tourist potential of Albania, at present the European capital of car-thieves, gun-runners and drug-smugglers, could draw back Albanians from Kosovo to their own country and also attract the Albanian minorities from Montenegro and North Macedonia to a newly prosperous ancestral homeland, so returning those lands to Slavs and making them homogenous again. Goodbye, Camp Bondsteel.

5. 2035-2038: The Liberation of Austro-Hungary

We believe that Hungary would be liberated very quickly, Austria would take longer, but there are some promising signs there. The EU is not popular in either.

6. 2039-2042: The Liberation of the Hellenes

Greece could be liberated relatively easily: Nazism has never dominated there, except among its US-colonial politicians. Cyprus, grabbed by Imperialist Britain in 1878 and let out to it like a piece of real estate, is more complex. The British – in fact – American base there would have to be removed. Although Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots get on well, there is the problem of the US and British-sponsored Turkish invasion of North Cyprus in 1974 and Turkish settlers from the mainland now there. Here Turkey must receive compensation elsewhere, so that Cyprus can be restored.

7. 2043-2046: The Liberation of the West Slavs

Slovakia might be liberated quite easily, but not so much the Germanised Czech Lands or Poland. Nazi operations like Akcja Visla in 1947, when the south-eastern Lemko Rusin minority were terrorised by Fascist Polish troops and forcibly removed from the Beskids show just how vicious Poland can be. Few now recall that Poland had a Fascist government before 1939 and took part in dismembering Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. Yet, it is a fact. Progress here could be slow, even in the 2040s.

8. 2047-2050: The Liberation of the German Lands

This means denazifying (and de-Americanising) the German Lands, in other words, restoring those lands at last to the German Peoples, den deutschen Volken. We do not see Germany remaining as a single nation. It would be better if it returned to being four, five or more different countries, such as Bavaria, Saxony, Hannover, Brandenburg and Westphalia.

9. 2051-2054: The Liberation of the Border German Peoples

By Border German Peoples, we mean the most latinised Germanic peoples, where French or Italian is sometimes also spoken, that is, those in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the artificial, Ukrainian-like (British-invented) country of Belgium, which is in fact part of the Southern Netherlands and, to a smaller extent, part of Northern France. Brussels, its overgrown village of a capital with a large immigrant population, may collapse very quickly once it has been cleansed of the cancerous EU and NATO headquarters.

10. 2055-2058: The Liberation of the Western Latin Peoples

The Western Latin peoples (the Eastern Latin peoples are the Romanians and the Moldovans), are those of France, Corsica, Italy, San Marino, Andorra, Spain, Catalonia, Portugal and their Non-Latin minorities, the Bretons and the Basques. With elites removed, here the ordinary people can at last come to the fore.

11. 2059-2062: The Liberation of the Nordic Peoples

Here we mean the Scandinavian and Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland. All have very small populations, but all too often have the hypocritical woke mentality of the Nazis. We only have to look at their attitude during the Second World War. Finland fought with the Nazis, Denmark and Norway hardly resisted and ‘neutral’ Sweden willingly supplied essential raw materials to the Reich.

12. 2063-2066: The Liberation of the Isles

This might be the most problematic of all. However, Ireland, soon to be reunited, would surely welcome full liberation, Republican Scotland too, even Wales: only a few are affected there in these Celtic lands of low population. But there is still England, which has to be freed from alien ‘Britain’ and so restored. That which has poisoned England and English life for nearly a millennium, the British Establishment, centred in the Norman-founded City of London (the Old English Capital was Winchester) and spreading its tentacles throughout the country, must be removed.

Consisting of parasitic politicians, with its current Bully Bunter English public schoolboy leader Johnson, the Armed Forces, the Secret Police (politely called MI5), aristocrats, bankers and industrialists, their propaganda mouthpiece, the BBC, condescendingly utilised to control the plebs with the other oligarchic media, as well as other government arms, the Establishment does not represent England, only Britain. Let the oppressed provinces of England rise and reject the gangrene of the tentacular Metropolitan elite. Instead of a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, imported in order to avoid having a Catholic on the throne, let a Non-French/Welsh/ Scottish/Dutch/German but English monarch at last come to the throne after a thousand years and a trillion tears. Only so can the British abscess be lanced and England healed from its millennial brain and soul-fever.

Conclusion

Here then is a suggestion for raising the European iron curtain, by denazifying, deNATOfying, deEUing and so liberating the European Peninsula of North-Western Eurasia. Some will say that, even spread over 44 years, this project is hopelessly optimistic, it is even impossible; others will say that it is pessimistic, that all could happen within a few years, for Western Europe is a house of cards. We do not know who is right. Is there even a Russian appetite for this? Not without popular support on the ground. Without popular support, no invader can win – even the USA must know this from its defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan. However, in any case, if the West continues to escalate the conflict in the Ukraine, inevitably it will have to pay for the consequences of its great foolishness. You should not play American roulette (4), especially when you live in a house of cards.

Yet, if multipolar Afro-Eurasia is to forge ahead at full speed, Europe must be liberated from its Western Supremacist/Nazi ideology. And the New Worlds will also have to sort themselves out, though with help. Russia can help in Latin America, China in Oceania. As for North America, the USA will yet collapse into its component parts, with the southern States returning to Mexico, New England going to Canada, other parts becoming independent Confederations, Alaska returning to the Russian Federation, thus restoring the Federation as a tricontinental nation, which is its destiny. Perhaps the denazified British Isles and Ireland could play a useful role in the States that will remain? Of course, we know nothing of how far or fast such an ambitious vision could progress. But frankly, if only 10% of any of the above were achieved, that would be huge and miraculous progress.

Notes:

1. See our article on this site: ‘What Does Nazism Mean?’ (29^th March 2022)

2. Many would say that World War II was itself merely the continuation of World War I. The French Marshal Foch considered that the Treaty of Versailles which officially ended the War would lead to a new War. As it was being signed in June 1919, he said: ‘This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years’. His forecast was exact to the very year.

3. See our article on this site ‘What Sort of People Fly a Ukrainian Flag?’ (3^rd May 2022)

4. This is the correct name for so-called ‘Russian roulette’. It never existed in Russia, but was invented by a US writer for a work of fiction in 1937. Presumably he gave it the Russian name as it sounded ‘exotic’ to him. Another crazy and racist Russophobic invention that only gun-obsessed cowboys with their cult of violence could think up.

NATO vs Russia: what happens next

In Davos and beyond, NATO’s upbeat narrative plays like a broken record, while on the ground, Russia is stacking up wins that could sink the Atlantic order.

By Pepe Escobar

May 24 2022

Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

On Monday, from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the latest leg of his weapons-solicitation-tour, with a glowing tribute. Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.”

He means, of course, everyone except the 88 percent of the planet that subscribes to the Rule of Law – instead of the faux construct the west calls a ‘rules-based international order.’

Back in the real world, Russia, slowly but surely has been rewriting the Art of Hybrid War. Yet within the carnival of NATO psyops, aggressive cognitive infiltration, and stunning media sycophancy, much is being made of the new $40 billion US ‘aid’ package to Ukraine, deemed capable of becoming a game-changer in the war.

This ‘game-changing’ narrative comes courtesy of the same people who burned though trillions of dollars to secure Afghanistan and Iraq. And we saw how that went down.

Ukraine is the Holy Grail of international corruption. That $40 billion can be a game-changer for only two classes of people: First, the US military-industrial complex, and second, a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and neo-connish NGOs, that will corner the black market for weapons and humanitarian aid, and then launder the profits in the Cayman Islands.

A quick breakdown of the $40 billion reveals $8.7 billion will go to replenish the US weapons stockpile (thus not going to Ukraine at all); $3.9 billion for USEUCOM (the ‘office’ that dictates military tactics to Kiev); $5 billion for a fuzzy, unspecified “global food supply chain”; $6 billion for actual weapons and “training” to Ukraine; $9 billion in “economic assistance” (which will disappear into selected pockets); and $0.9 billion for refugees.

US risk agencies have downgraded Kiev to the dumpster of non-reimbursing-loan entities, so large American investment funds are ditching Ukraine, leaving the European Union (EU) and its member-states as the country’s only option.

Few of those countries, apart from Russophobic entities such as Poland, can justify to their own populations sending huge sums of direct aid to a failed state. So it will fall to the Brussels-based EU machine to do just enough to maintain Ukraine in an economic coma – independent from any input from member-states and institutions.

These EU ‘loans’ – mostly in the form of weapons shipments – can always be reimbursed by Kiev’s wheat exports. This is already happening on a small scale via the port of Constanta in Romania, where Ukrainian wheat arrives in barges over the Danube and is loaded into dozens of cargo ships everyday. Or, via convoys of trucks rolling with the weapons-for-wheat racket. However, Ukrainian wheat will keep feeding the wealthy west, not impoverished Ukrainians.

Moreover, expect NATO this summer to come up with another monster psyop to defend its divine (not legal) right to enter the Black Sea with warships to escort Ukrainian vessels transporting wheat. Pro-NATO media will spin it as the west being ‘saved’ from the global food crisis – which happens to be directly caused by serial, hysterical packages of western sanctions.

Poland goes for soft annexation

NATO is indeed massively ramping up its ‘support’ to Ukraine via the western border with Poland. That’s in synch with Washington’s two overarching targets: First, a ‘long war,’ insurgency-style, just like Afghanistan in the 1980s, with jihadis replaced by mercenaries and neo-Nazis.  Second, the sanctions instrumentalized to “weaken” Russia, militarily and economically.

Other targets remain unchanged, but are subordinate to the Top Two: make sure that the Democrats are re-elected in the mid-terms (that’s not going to happen); irrigate the industrial-military complex with funds that are recycled back as kickbacks (already happening); and keep the hegemony of the US dollar by all means (tricky: the multipolar world is getting its act together).

A key target being met with astonishing ease is the destruction of the German – and consequently the EU’s – economy, with a great deal of the surviving companies to be eventually sold off to American interests.

Take, for instance, BMW board member Milan Nedeljkovic telling Reuters that “our industry accounts for about 37 percent of natural gas consumption in Germany” which will sink without Russian gas supplies.

Washington’s plan is to keep the new ‘long war’ going at a not-too-incandescent level – think Syria during the 2010s – fueled by rows of mercenaries, and featuring periodic NATO escalations by anyone from Poland and the Baltic midgets to Germany.

Last week, that pitiful Eurocrat posing as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, gave away the game when previewing the upcoming meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

Borrell admitted that “the conflict will be long” and “the priority of the EU member states” in Ukraine “consists in the supply of heavy weapons.”

Then Polish President Andrzej Duda met with Zelensky in Kiev. The slew of agreements the two signed indicate that Warsaw intends to profit handsomely from the war to enhance its politico-military, economic, and cultural influence in western Ukraine. Polish nationals will be allowed to be elected to Ukrainian government bodies and even aim to become constitutional judges.

In practice, that means Kiev is all but transferring management of the Ukrainian failed state to Poland. Warsaw won’t even have to send troops. Call it a soft annexation.

The steamroller on the move

As it stands, the situation on the battlefield can be examined in this map. Intercepted communications from the Ukrainian command reveal their aim to build a layered defense from Poltava through Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhia, Krivoy Rog, and Nikolaev – which happens to be a shield for the already fortified Odessa. None of that guarantees success against the incoming Russian onslaught.

It’s always important to remember that Operation Z started on February 24 with around 150,000 or so fighters – and definitely not Russia’s elite forces. And yet they liberated Mariupol and destroyed the elite neo-Nazi Azov batallion in a matter of only fifty days, cleaning up a city of 400,000 people with minimal casualties.

While fighting a real war on the ground – not those indiscriminate US bombings from the air – in a huge country against a large army, facing multiple technical, financial and logistical challenges, the Russians also managed to liberate Kherson, Zaporizhia and virtually the whole area of the ‘baby twins,’ the popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russia’s ground forces commander, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, has turbo-charged missile, artillery and air strikes to a pace five times faster than during the first phase of Operation Z, while the Ukrainians, overall, are low or very low on fuel, ammo for artillery, trained specialists, drones, and radars.

What American armchair and TV generals simply cannot comprehend is that in Russia’s view of this war – which military expert Andrei Martyanov defines as a “combined arms and police operation” – the two top targets are the destruction of all military assets of the enemy while preserving the life of its own soldiers.

So while losing tanks is not a big deal for Moscow, losing lives is. And that accounts for those massive Russian bombings; each military target must be conclusively destroyed. Precision strikes are crucial.

There is a raging debate among Russian military experts on why the Ministry of Defense does not go for a fast strategic victory. They could have reduced Ukraine to rubble – American style – in no time. That’s not going to happen. The Russians prefer to advance slowly and surely, in a sort of steamroller pattern. They only advance after sappers have fully surveilled the terrain; after all there are mines everywhere.

The overall pattern is unmistakable, whatever the NATO spin barrage. Ukrainian losses are becoming exponential – as many as 1,500 killed or wounded each day, everyday. If there are 50,000 Ukrainians in the several Donbass cauldrons, they will be gone by the end of June.

Ukraine must have lost as many as 20,000 soldiers in and around Mariupol alone. That’s a massive military defeat, largely surpassing Debaltsevo in 2015 and previously Ilovaisk in 2014. The losses near Izyum may be even higher than in Mariupol. And now come the losses in the Severodonetsk corner.

We’re talking here about the best Ukrainian forces. It doesn’t even matter that only 70 percent of Western weapons sent by NATO ever make it to the battlefield: the major problem is that the best soldiers are going…going…gone, and won’t be replaced. Azov neo-Nazis, the 24th Brigade, the 36th Brigade, various Air Assault brigades – they all suffered losses of 60+ percent or have been completely demolished.

So the key question, as several Russian military experts have stressed, is not when Kiev will ‘lose’ as a point of no return; it is how many soldiers Moscow is prepared to lose to get to this point.

The entire Ukrainian defense is based on artillery. So the key battles ahead involve long-range artillery. There will be problems, because the US is about to deliver M270 MLRS systems with precision-guided ammunition, capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 70 kilometers or more.

Russia, though, has a counterpunch: the Hermes Small Operational-Tactical Complex, using high precision munitions, possibility of laser guidance, and a range of more than 100 kilometers. And they can work in conjunction with the already mass-produced Pantsir air defense systems.

The sinking ship

Ukraine, within its current borders, is already a thing of the past. Georgy Muradov, permanent representative of Crimea to the President of Russia and Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government, is adamant: “Ukraine in the form in which it was, I think, will no longer remain. This is already the former Ukraine.”

The Sea of ​​Azov has now become a “sea of ​​joint use” by Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), as confirmed by Muradov.

Mariupol will be restored. Russia has had plenty of experience in this business in both Grozny and Crimea. The Russia-Crimea land corridor is on. Four hospitals among five in Mariupol have already reopened and public transportation is back, as well as three gas stations.

The imminent loss of Severodonetsk and Lysichansk will ring serious alarm bells in Washington and Brussels, because that will represent the beginning of the end of the current regime in Kiev. And that, for all practical purposes – and beyond all the lofty rhetoric of “the west stands with you” – means heavy players won’t be exactly encouraged to bet on a sinking ship.

On the sanctions front, Moscow knows exactly what to expect, as detailed by Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov: “Russia proceeds from the fact that sanctions against it are a rather long-term trend, and from the fact that the pivot to Asia, the acceleration of reorientation to eastern markets, to Asian markets is a strategic direction for Russia. We will make every effort to integrate into value chains precisely together with Asian countries, together with Arab countries, together with South America.”

On efforts to “intimidate Russia,” players would be wise to listen to the hypersonic sound of 50 Sarmat state-of-the-art missiles ready for combat this autumn, as explained by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.

This week’s meetings in Davos brings to light another alignment forming in the world’s overarching unipolar vs. multipolar battle. Russia, the baby twins, Chechnya and allies such as Belarus are now pitted against ‘Davos leaders’ – in other words, the combined western elite, with a few exceptions like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Zelensky will be fine. He’s protected by British and American special forces. The family is reportedly living in an $8 million mansion in Israel. He owns a $34 million villa in Miami Beach, and another in Tuscany. Average Ukrainians were lied to, robbed, and in many cases, murdered, by the Kiev gang he presides over – oligarchs, security service (SBU) fanatics, neo-Nazis. And those Ukrainians that remain (10 million have already fled) will continue to be treated as expendable.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir “the new Hitler” Putin is in absolutely no hurry to end this larger than life drama that is ruining and rotting the already decaying west to its core. Why should he? He tried everything, since 2007, on the “why can’t we get along” front. Putin was totally rejected. So now it’s time to sit back, relax, and watch the Decline of the West.

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

Sitrep Operation Z: ‘The Grind’ is mainly done for now – Donbas Arc lights up like a solar storm

May 24, 2022

by Saker Staff

This is an open thread on the entire Donbas Arc where the ‘grind’ is now paying off and the Russians are running and counting coup, working like a well-orchestrated orchestra.  (Unforgivable hyperbole in writing, but it is quite a thing to watch!).

Over to the commentators to give us the details.

Keep eyes on for confirmation:  UNCONFIRMED but oh boy this would be juicy if confirmed.  How about those Poles?  From Intel Slava:

Against the background of information about the arrival of units in Pavlograd from the territory of Poland, a missile attack was launched on a military facility in the city.

Which object was hit is still unknown. It is likely that the target was precisely the place of concentration of those same armed groups that arrived from Poland.

Pavlograd is the most important transport hub for supplying the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass.

Roads run from it to Pokrovsk, Kurakhovo and Marinka, as well as towards the Kramatorsk-Slavic agglomeration. The railway goes towards Avdiivka.

For now, Readovka’s report and map.

Today from Avdiivka to Estuary Russian Armed Forces and allied forces storm Estuary.  Most of the city has been liberated and serious military operations are underway. The entire Donbass arc is in motion. Ukrainian sources report the withdrawal of troops from Severodonetsk. The main supply routes are under the fire control of the Allied Artillery.

Kharkiv Front. Today, fighting continued in the area of Liptsov, Ternovoye and Rubezhnoye.

Izumo-Luhansk front. In the morning, it was reported that a bridge across the Lugan River was blown up near Svitlodar, then information appeared about the breakthrough of the Allied forces in this direction. Later it became known about the beginning of the assault on Krasny Liman, and about the capture of almost half of the city by the Allied forces.

Russian aviation and artillery are also working in the area of Soledar and Bakhmut (Artemivsk). From the Popasnyansky front, they reported the end of the battles for Toshkovka (in favor of the Allied forces) and successes in the Zolotoe area. The Russian Armed Forces and allied forces storm Zolotoe Positions are occupied at the entrance to the city The 6th Regiment of the People’s Militia of the LPR occupied two streets in Kamyshevakh. Access to the borders of the LPR and DPR from Troitsky was also made.

This morning, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched a missile attack on the railway infrastructure in Korosten, Zhytomyr region. Powerful explosions thundered in Kharkiv and Pavlograd-military facilities were destroyed.

Repulsed provocations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on our territories. A Ukrainian drone was shot down in the Rostov region. Air defense systems were destroyed APU made an unsuccessful attempt of provocation in the Kursk regionAir defense systems destroyed all air targets in the Kursk region. Anti-aircraft missiles flew into the sky over the Belgorod region in the evening.

Pepe Escobar : Interview with The Press Project

May 22, 2022

From a unipolar to a multipolar world.  This is my itvw with the wonderful folks at The Press Project in Greece.  In English, with Greek subtitles.

Sitrep Operation Z: Yes, it is ‘The Grind’

May 22, 2022

Source

by Saker Staff

This is a short sitrep just to bring the latest information together.  First, Brian Berletic does a fine job of describing the battlefield for us, without drowning it in detail.  He makes a lot of sense and touches on those ‘wonderful M777 howitzers’, which, if we believe the Wurlitzer Media, are making a decisive difference.  Well, they are not.

A summary of Berletic’s update for Russian military operations in Ukraine for May 21, 2022:

1. Ukrainian militants in the Azovstal steel works have unconditionally surrendered numbering between hundreds (current Red Cross count) to thousands according to Russian sources;
2. Mariupol has been secured by Russia since mid to late-April – Ukraine finally admits however that its “combat operations” have fully ended;
3. Russia continues to make progress in the Donbas region – Ukrainian forces are being encircled in Severodonestsk and Lysychansk – the salient around Papasnya is expanding both west and north as part of this major encirclement;
4. Pentagon admits Russia still poses the majority of its combat power – possess a “numerical advantage” over Ukraine – and is making “slow, uneven” progress, but progress nonetheless;
5. Kharkov “offensive” has either stalled or is in the process of being rolled back;
6. US M777 howitzers have been found, tracked, targeted, and destroyed by Russian forces;
7. Additional attempts to send heavy weapons will face similar technical, tactical, strategic, and manpower challenges;

https://odysee.com/$/embed/russian-ops-in-ukraine-ukraine-losing/c9d121ac03c4c4841aec214bf5a17b178aa4efee

While ‘The Grind’ continues, take a look at Brian’s update in order to fully understand the shape of the battlefield according to Readovka’s short machine translated report:

Kharkiv Front. Medium-intensity fights. The collision occurs in the area of the village of Liptsy and Rubezhnoye.

The Izyum front. One of the most stressful areas. Serious battles are taking place near Kurulka, Velikaya Kamyshevakha, and Dolgenky. The military is heading for the encirclement of the Krasnolimansk group. The front is leaning towards Slavyansk.

Luhansk front. The offensive of groups of fighters continues in several directions from Popasna, the main one of which is now Severodonetsk. Thanks to the destruction of the automobile bridge between Lisichansk and Severodonetsk, the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the latter is becoming increasingly difficult. Fighters go to Vozdvizhenka, threatening to cut the route “Artemovsk-Svetlodarsk”, fight in Pilipchatino, directly on the way to Artemovsk. An active clash near the Soledar-Lisichansk highway, a cauldron is being erected for the Gorsky and Zolotoye grouping, battles in Viktorovka, Kamyshevakha, on the approaches to Vrubovka, Toshkovka.

Donetsk front. Heavy fighting continues at Novobakhmutovka and Novoselovka-Vtoroi, as well as near New York. In the area of Marinka and Ugledar, there are no changes yet.

In Russia. They were applied on the villages of the Kursk border area-Tetkino and Popovo-Lezhachi, as reported by the governor of Starovoit. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also shelled Gorlovka, hitting the surrounding villages of Panteleimonovka and Aksenovka. Over Ilovaisk, where a large train with humanitarian aid arrived, was shot down of “Tochka-U”, two women were injured.

—

What is heartwarming is Graham Philips with a short video essay of Mariupol coming back to life. However, the area was extensively mined, and currently de-mining is underway by the DNR / Russia side, before any journalistic access is permitted.

https://t.me/grahamwphillips/168

The size of the Russian Aid to liberated areas is massive.  The Donbass Aid Train arrived in Ilovaisk. It was formed on the initiative of the All-Russian People’s Front and Russian Railways.  It departed from Moscow, consisted of 68 wagons, of which 27 were intended for the LPR, and 41 for the liberated territories of the DPR. This is more than 2,400 tons of humanitarian cargo: food, personal hygiene products, medicines, flour, stationery, building materials and equipment, generators.

Zelensky babbled on about ‘diplomatic solutions’ but he changes daily, as Lavrov says, depending on what he had to drink or what he smoked.

Remember the Russian Pain Dial?  We’re seeing it being notched up slowly.  Russia bans 963 Americans.  Is this tit for tat?  Not really: it is anything you can do we can triple up on!  The political and diplomatic landscape is heating up and in this next week we will see some of that being reported on.  Major new reveals came in this past week on the biolabs issue.  Pepe Escobar weighs in via his Telegram channel.  https://t.me/c/1394010098/3649

The big news is more tests of Sarmat.  🔎 “…today, they say that air defense does not exist for the Sarmat missile system, and it probably will not exist in the coming decades,” Commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, Col. Gen. Sergei Karakaev, says.

That is it for today. Enjoy your discussion and be careful with the Ukie propaganda. It is everywhere.

Russia Rewrites the Art of Hybrid War

May 20, 2022

Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up.

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

The ironclad fictional “narrative” imposed all across NATOstan is that Ukraine is “winning”.

So why would weapons peddler retrofitted as Pentagon head Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin literally beg since late February to have his phone calls answered by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, only to have his wish finally granted?

It’s now confirmed by one of my top intel sources. The call was a direct consequence of panic. The United States Government (USG) by all means wants to scotch the detailed Russian investigation – and accumulation of evidence – on the US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, as I outlined in a previous column.

This phone call happened exactly after an official Russian statement to the UN Security Council on May 13: we will use articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bioweapons to investigate the Pentagon’s biological “experiments” in Ukraine.

That was reiterated by Under Secretary-General of the UN in charge of disarmament, Thomas Markram, even as all ambassadors of NATO member countries predictably denied the collected evidence as “Russian disinformation”.

Shoigu cold see the call coming eons away. Reuters, merely quoting the proverbial “Pentagon official”, spun that the allegedly one-hour-long call led to nothing. Nonsense. Austin, according to the Americans, demanded a “ceasefire” – which must have originated a Siberian cat smirk on Shoigu’s face.

Shoigu knows exactly which way the wind is blowing on the ground – for Ukrainian Armed Forces and UkroNazis alike. It’s not only the Azovstal debacle – and Kiev’s all-around army breakdown.

After the fall of Popasnaya – the crucial, most fortified Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass – the Russians and Donetsk/Luhansk forces have breached defenses along four different vectors to north, northwest, west and south. What’s left of the Ukrainian front is crumbling – fast, with a massive cauldron subdivided in a maze of mini-cauldrons: a military disaster the USG cannot possibly spin.

Now, in parallel, we can also expect full exposure – on overdrive – of the Pentagon bioweapons racket. The only “offer you can’t refuse” left to the USG would be to present something tangible to the Russians to avoid a full investigation.

That’s not gonna happen. Moscow is fully aware that going public with illegal work on banned biological weapons is an existential threat to the US Deep State. Especially when documents seized by the Russians show that Big Pharma – via Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and Gilead – was involved in several “experiments”. Fully exposing the whole maze, from the start, was one of Putin’s stated objectives.

More “military-technical measures”?

Three days after the UN presentation, the board of the Russian Foreign Ministry held a special session to discuss “the radically changed geopolitical realities that have developed as a result of the hybrid war against our country unleashed by the West – under the pretext of the situation in Ukraine – unprecedented in scale and ferocity, including the revival in Europe of a racist worldview in the form of cave Russophobia, an open course for the ‘abolition’ of Russia and everything Russian.”

So it’s no wonder “the aggressive revisionist course of the West requires a radical revision of Russia’s relations with unfriendly states.”

We should expect “a new edition of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation” coming out soon.

This new Foreign Policy Concept will elaborate on what Foreign Minister Lavrov once again stressed at a meeting honoring the 30th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy: the US has declared an all-round Hybrid War on Russia. The only thing lacking, as it stands, is a formal declaration of war.

Beyond the disinformation fog veiling the application of Finland and Sweden – call them the Dumb and Dumber Nordics – to join NATO, what really matters is another instance of declaration of war: the prospect of missiles with nuclear warheads stationed really close to Russian borders. Moscow already warned the Finns and Swedes, politely, that this would be dealt with it via “military-technical measures”. That’s exactly what Washington – and NATO minions – were told would happen before the start of Operation Z.

And of course this goes much deeper, involving Romania and Poland as well. Bucharest already has Aegis Ashore missile launchers capable of sending Tomahawks with nuclear warheads at Russia, while Warsaw is receiving the same systems. To cut to the chase, if there’s no de-escalation, they will all eventually end up receiving Mr. Khinzal’s hypersonic business card.

NATO member Turkey, meanwhile, plays a deft game, issuing its own list of demands before even considering the Nordics’ gamble. Ankara wants no more sanctions on its purchase of S-400s and on top if be re-included in the F-35 program. It will be fascinating to watch what His Master’s Voice will come up with to seduce the Sultan. The Nordics engaged in a self-correcting “clear unequivocal stance” against the PKK and the PYD is clearly not enough for the Sultan, who relished muddying the waters even more as he stressed that buying Russian energy is a “strategic” issue for Turkey.

Counteracting financial Shock’n Awe

By now it’s evidently clear that open-ended Operation Z targets unipolar Hegemon power, the infinite expansion of vassalized NATO, and the world’s financial architecture – an intertwined combo that largely transcends the Ukraine battleground.

Serial Western sanctions package hysteria ended up triggering Russia’s so far quite successful counter-financial moves. Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up: inflation, higher commodity prices, breakdown of supply chains, exploding cost of living, impoverishment of the middle classes, and unfortunately for great swathes of the Global South, outright poverty and starvation.

In the near future, as insider evidence surfaces, a convincing case will be made that the Russian leadership even gamed the Western financial gamble/ blatant robbery of over $300 billion in Russian reserves.

This implies that already years ago – let’s say, at least from 2016, based on analyses by Sergey Glazyev – the Kremlin knew this would inevitably happen. As trust remains a rigid foundation of a monetary system, the Russian leadership may have calculated that the Americans and their vassals, driven by blind Russophobia, would play all their cards at once when push came to shove – utterly demolishing global trust on “their” system.

Because of Russia’s infinite natural resources, the Kremlin may have factored that the nation would eventually survive the financial Shock’n Awe – and even profit from it (ruble appreciation included). The reward is just too sweet: opening the way to The Doomed Dollar – without having to ask Mr. Sarmat to present his nuclear business card.

Russia could even entertain the hypothesis of getting a mighty return on those stolen funds. A great deal of Western assets – totaling as much as $500 billion – may be nationalized if the Kremlin so chooses.

So Russia is winning not only militarily but also to a large extent geopolitically – 88% of the planet does not align with NATOstan hysteria – and of course in the economic/financial sphere.

This in fact is the key Hybrid War battleground where the collective West is being checkmated. One of the next key steps will be an expanded BRICS coordinating their dollar-bypassing strategy.

None of the above should overshadow the still to be measured interconnected repercussions of the mass surrender of Azov neo-Nazis at UkroNazistan Central in Azovstal.

The mythical Western “narrative” about freedom-fighting heroes imposed since February by NATOstan media collapsed with a single blow. Cue to the thunderous silence all over the Western infowar front, where no mutts even attempted to sing that crappy, “winning” Eurovision song.

What happened, in essence, is that the creme de la creme of NATO-trained neo-Nazis, “advised” by top Western experts, weaponized to death, entrenched in deep concrete anti-nuclear bunkers in the bowels of Azovstal, was either pulverized or forced to surrender like cornered rats.

Novorossiya as a game-changer

The Russian General Staff will be adjusting their tactics for the major follow-up in Donbass – as the best Russian analysts and war correspondents incessantly debate. They will have to face an inescapable problem: as much as the Russian methodically grind down the – disaggregated – Ukrainian Army in Donbass, a new NATO army is being trained and weaponized in western Ukraine.

So there is a real danger that depending on the ultimate long-term aims of Operation Z – which are only shared by the Russian military leadership – Moscow runs the risk of encountering, in a few months, a mobile and better weaponized incarnation of the demoralized army it is now destroying. And this is exactly what the Americans mean by “weakening” Russia.

As it stands, there are several reasons why a new Novorossiya reality may turn out to be a positive game-changer for Russia. Among them:

1. The economic/logistics complex from Kharkov to Odessa – along Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Nikolaev – is intimately linked with Russian industry.
2. By controlling the Sea of Azov – already a de facto “Russian lake” – and subsequently the Black Sea, Russia will have total control of export routes for the region’s world-class grain production. Extra bonus: total exclusion of NATO.
3. All of the above suggests a concerted drive for the development of an integrated agro-heavy industry complex – with the extra bonus of serious tourism potential.

Under this scenario, a remaining Kiev-Lviv rump Ukraine, not incorporated to Russia, and of course not rebuilt, would be at best subjected to a no-fly zone plus selected artillery/missile/drone strikes in case NATO continues to entertain funny ideas.

This would be a logical conclusion for a Special Military Operation focused on precision strikes and a deliberate emphasis on sparing civilian lives and infrastructure while methodically disabling the Ukrainian military/logistics spectrum. All of that takes time. Yet Russia may have all the time in the world, as we all keep listening to the sound of the collective West spiraling down.