Erdogan: Iran’s participation in Russia, Syria & Turkey talks possible

31 Jan, 2023

Source: Al Mayadeen Net + Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

Any tripartite talks should be preceded with prior coordination and planning between Syria and Russia, according to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (Archive)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed on Monday the possibility of Iran’s participation in the tripartite talks between Russia, Syria, and Turkey.

In a televised speech, Erdogan said that “It is possible for Iran to participate in the tripartite talks between Turkey, Syria, and Russia.”

He added, “Our relations with Russia are based on mutual respect, and although we were unable to obtain the desired result regarding northern Syria, the tripartite talks could be held, and it is possible that Iran will take part in them.”

Earlier this month, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said, “The meetings with the Turkish side must be based on prior coordination and planning between Syria and Russia in order for them to be fruitful, and in order to reach the tangible goals and results that Syria wants from these meetings.”

On December 28, the Russian Defense Ministry said that “trilateral talks between the defense ministers of Russia, Syria, and Turkey took place in Moscow. The meeting discussed ways to address the Syrian crisis, the issue of refugees, and joint efforts to combat extremist groups in Syria.” 

At the conclusion of the meeting, the defense ministers highlighted how the dialogue was constructive, stressing the need for all three parties to hold further talks to bring more stability to Syria and the whole region, the statement added.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Defense Ministry said Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and the head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MIT), Hakan Fidan, met Syrian Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas and Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk in Moscow, along with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

“Ways of resolving the Syrian crisis and the problem of refugees as well as joint efforts to combat extremist groups in Syria have been discussed,” the Russian RIA Novosti news agency said, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Syrian crisis, the refugee issue, and efforts of joint fight against all terror organizations on Syrian soil were discussed in the constructive meeting,” the Ministry’s statement added.

Will The Ukraine De-Militarise Itself?

September 26, 2022

Source

by James Tweedie

Back in August 2022 I wrote that NATO was ‘demilitarising’ itself, sending such huge amounts of arms to the Ukraine before and during the Russian special military operation (SMO) that its armies had nothing left to fight with.

That process has continued, with Slovenia, the northernmost of the former federal republics of Yugoslavia, sending its entire armoured vehicle fleet to Kiev. The last scrapings of the barrel, just announced, are 28 M-55S tanks. These are modernised Soviet-designed T-55s with some Israeli explosive-reactive armour (ERA) blocks added. But underneath that they’re still a 1950s design, four generations behind the latest Russian tanks.

The question now is: can those arms sustain the Ukrainian military effort? And if the Ukraine, the buffed-up proxy for all NATO and the Five Eyes countries too, is losing the war, when will Russia and its Donbass republican allies achieve victory?

I was born in the mid-1970s, during the Cold War, and I grew up under he shadow of the mushroom cloud. So I must confess to being one of those who were anxious for this conflict to be over quickly, before the nuclear powers came to blows. But one can’t hurry history.

War of Attrition

In his bombshell speech on the morning of 21^st September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that the apparent slow progress of the SMO by the need to unpick the Gordian Knot of hardened defences the Ukrainian Nazi battalions built up on the front line over eight years.

“A head-on attack against them would have led to heavy losses,” Putin said, “which is why our units, as well as the forces of the Donbass republics, are acting competently and systematically, using military equipment and saving lives, moving step by step to liberate Donbass.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu gave a televised interview the same morning. He gave extremely specific figures for both Russian and Ukrainian military casualties. “Our losses to date are 5,937 dead,” he said, but added that 90 per cent of the wounded had recovered and returned to duty.

According to Shoigu, Ukraine has lost 61,207 killed and 49,368 wounded (a total of 110,575 casualties) from an initial military strength of 201-202 thousand. The caveat to that that the Ukraine has conscripted hundreds of thousands of men into territorial defence units since the start of the conflict. That’s greater than a ten-to-one ratio of Ukrainian to Russian casualties

Shoigu also said that over the previous three weeks — since the launch of Kiev’s counter-offensives in Kherson and Kharkov — the Ukrainians had lost more than 7,000 men and 970 pieces of heavy equipment, including 208 tanks, 245 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), 186 other armoured vehicles, 15 aircraft and four helicopters.

That amounts to about 60 per cent of the roughly 350 tanks, and three-quarters of the 328 IFVs, supplied by Western countries since February 24. If one lumps armoured personnel carriers (APCs) in with IFVs, Shoigu is still talking about 30 per cent losses of NATO-supplied heavy armour.

Kiev is preparing for or has already begun more counter-offensives towards Lisichansk in the LPR, Donetsk city, from Ugledar to the south to Mariupol and towards Berdyansk or Melitopol in Zaporozhye oblast. Russian aircraft, missiles and artillery are already hitting the groups of forces concentrated for that. If those offensives go the same way as the others, surely the Ukrainians will soon run out of both men and machines, right?

Blogger and YouTuber Andrei Martyanov, a Russian who served in the Soviet armed forces, is not worried about about how long it takes to get the SMO over and done with. He has argued that his countrymen can win simply by waiting for the Ukrainians to throw themselves onto their bayonets, until they run out of bodies.

With all due respect, allow me to sound a note of scepticism: that assumes that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western backers care how many die, or that the Ukrainian people (more than 8 million of whom are now scattered across Europe and even further afield) have the inclination and the opportunity to rise up against the fascist death-squad state.

The daily Russian Ministry of Defence body-count of hundreds of the miserable ‘territorial defence’ conscripts along the Donbass line — untrained and barely-armed middle-aged men press-ganged in the street — is not much of an indicator of progress.

It’s the territorial gains, no matter how slow, that matter. Russia cannot just count on the Ukrainians to suicidally ‘demilitarise’ themselves.

Putin’s announcement of a “partial mobilisation” of 300,000 army reservists was warmly welcomed by pro-Russian social media commentators. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this, coupled with the referenda in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson on reunification with Russia.

But there are caveats. State Duma Defence Committee chairman Andrey Kartapolov clarified that those troops would be deployed to defend the country’s borders and to create “operational depth” — in other words as a second defensive echelon. Martyanov argues that will free up regular front-line troops to conquer more territory. But it remains unclear how many of them were deployed to begin with.

Eyes on the Prize

So what is Russia trying to achieve in the Ukraine? Putin said in his Wednesday morning speech that the main task was to defend the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass. That implies capturing the whole of the oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk.

But some ‘stretch goals’ may be added, including forging a land corridor to the Crimea and maybe even Transnistria, the Russian protectorate in Moldova.

Russia’s other main aim was to stop the Ukraine from joining NATO. That would allow the US to base nuclear weapons just 300 miles from Moscow in a position to launch a first strike attack.

US President Joe Biden’s response to Putin at the UN General Assembly later that day included the comment that “a nuclear war cannot be won — and must never be fought.” While true, that observation was shamelessly hypocritical. It was likely only made out of fear after Putin’s warning that Russia takes national defence and nuclear deterrence seriously.

Securing the Ukraine’s neutrality is not just part of “demilitarisation”: it could also be called “de-Nazification”, since NATO and its shadow the European Union (EU) were behind the 2014 coup by the Azov battalion and their ilk.

But Russia needs a legitimately-elected head of state to sign up to that, and right now that man is Zelensky. A peace deal struck with any military junta which might depose the comedian-turned-president would only be denounced by the next elected leader.

Even if a new civilian government was elected on a pro-peace, non-alignment platform (as Zelensky was), it would only last as long as it took the US, UK and EU to organise a repeat of the 2004-05 ‘Orange Revolution’ and the 2014 ‘Euromaidan’ coups d’etat.

The crazy Ukro-Nazis and their enablers have to ‘own’ the peace and the agreement to cede the Donbass and Crimea — and thereby lose all credibility.

But the Ukraine had already lost the Crimea and effective control over the Donbass before the SMO even kicked off. Kiev won’t sign any peace deal unless it has something else to lose. If Moscow is also serious about readmitting Zaporozhye and Kherson to the Russian motherland following a ‘Yes’ vote in the coming referenda, then there’s nothing to bargain with there either. Russia may need to capture other territories to use as bargaining chips.

To do so, it would have to inflict a defeat on the Ukrainian armed forces that would force them to retreat — not only from Donetsk and Lugansk but from other areas, maybe all the way back to the Dnieper river that divides the country in two.

Such a victory can’t be won unless Russia regains the initiative and actively starts pushing the Ukrainian armed forces back.

The Great M.I.C. Cash-In

The Kiev regime’s aims are clearly to keep grifting off its Western sponsors as long as possible, before fleeing to the sunny tax havens where they have billions stashed. But what does the West really want out of this war?

The stated aims of Washington and friends are to defend Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty (code for invading the Donbass and Crimea and ethnically cleansing them), along with its non-existent “right” to become a NATO launchpad, to “weaken” Russia militarily (by causing as many casualties as possible) and to put “international pressure” on Putin (economic warfare with the goal of regime change).

One should avoid making predictions, but let’s say the US and its satellites fail in all of that (since they have done so far). What will they try to win as a consolation prize?

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, an unelected bureaucrat who made a huge mess of her previous job as German defence minister, has vowed that sanctions on Russia will continue for years to come. That the sanctions are crippling the economies of EU member states, especially her home country, doesn’t seem to bother UVDL. And seeing the EU and its appointed commissioners are increasingly imposing their foreign policy diktats on the 27 governments, she might get her way.

More importantly, NATO desperately needs to save face — now that it has exposed by Russia as a paper tiger. Hence the triumphant crowing over moves, far from complete, to grant existing de-facto allies Sweden and Finland formal membership.

The West may try to claim a kind of moral victory on the basis that it may take Russia more than a year to defeat ‘brave little Ukraine’, or be forced to wipe out most of its military-age male population to win. But whose idea was that? Zelensky, Biden and all other Western leaders have made that bed.

But NATO is really just a pyramid scheme to sell overpriced Western, especially US, arms to its vassals. And therein lies a contradiction, because the US military-industrial complex (MIC) has competition from those of the UK, Germany, France and even Sweden — a country with a smaller population than the city of Moscow.

The Ukraine has used the referenda on unification with Russia as the latest pretext to demand Germany donate its newest models of Leopard 2 tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles. But why doesn’t Kiev ask the US for some of its M1 Abrams and M2 Bradleys instead? The Pentagon has many more to spare.

The truth is that neither Germany nor the US can afford to have its supposedly-invincible wunderwaffen shown up, and blown up, in battle with Russian forces. Despite weighing only two-thirds as much as the US and German behemoths, the Russian tanks have about the same effective armour protection — thanks to state-of-the-art ERA technology — and guns of equal destructive power. And there are a lot more Russian tanks, anti-tank missiles, attack jets and helicopters on the battlefield in the Ukraine.

The US has only managed to sell the M1 to eight other countries, compared to 18 for the Leopard 2. The export model of the Abrams is ‘Nerfed’ by removing the depleted uranium rods from its composite armour, so countries like Australia and Saudi Arabia get sub-par tanks. The only overseas customer for the British Challenger 2 is Oman, while the French Leclerc tank has been exported to the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.

By contrast, the Russian T-72 is currently in service in 40 countries, including both Russia and the Ukraine. Like the Russian intervention in Syria, the war in the Ukraine could prove to be a serious marketing tool for the Russian arms industry — eating the US MIC’s lunch.

Veteran Russian General in Syria Leading Combat Group in Ukraine

JULY 19, 2022

 ARABI SOURI– 

Veteran Russian Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov who served in Syria is leading the Russian Army’s ‘East Grouping’ operating in Ukraine, a Russian Ministry of Defense revealed the name on Monday in a press statement.

The Russian MoD’s statement commenting on the visit of Russia’s Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu to the area of operation of the ‘East Grouping’ mentioned the name of General Muradov when briefing his group’s operations to the minister.

Military commentators picked up the name of Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov a veteran of the Russian army who served in Syria in the capacity of military consultant overseeing the military operations in Deir Ezzor in 2017 for which Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded him the title and star “Hero of Russia”.

Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu in the Donbas, Ukraine

RT, the Russian media outlet banned in the ‘free world’ added in a report more details about the Lieutenant-General of the Russian army:

• Born in Daghestan in 1973.
• In 2016, appointed as the Russia Representative in the Monitoring and Coordination Center for Ceasefire and Demarcation Line Stability in Donbas.
  -Since 2018, he has held the position of Deputy Commander of the Southern Military District Forces.
  -In February 2020, Muradov was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, before he was assigned on November 11 to command the Russian peacekeeping forces in the Karabakh region, and remained its commander until September 2021.

The appearance of Lt-General Muradov in the news came to the dismay of the ‘inclusive diversified’ regime of Joe Biden with Biden’s security advisor lashing out at the Russian army veteran for combating ISIS (ISIL) in Syria accusing him of committing war crimes, the irony of a US official accusing those who combat terrorism of war crimes is an insult to the intelligence of the taxpayers paying the salaries of those US officials.

This same former senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s failed election campaign Jake Sullivan who for his failure in Clinton’s campaign, he was rewarded with the post of National Security Advisor of the United States, he’s attributed by many political analysts for inventing the ‘Trump Collusion with Russia’ hoax leading to calls for the impeachment of the former US president and pushing Trump to take hard measures against Russia due to his inability in handling the pressure and as an attempt to show he’s strong on the party he’s accused of colluding with, the events leading to the current situation of open hostility and most probably the war in Europe and the suffering of the European people in a war that was not necessary but pushed for by Russophobes, the likes of Sullivan.

Lieutenant-General Rustam Muradov has also earned his spot on the sanctions list of the European Union after the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine to protect the people of the Donbas. The degenerated and fractured from within EU which is now speeding toward catastrophe by its own doing.

https://syrianews.cc/top-syrian-and-russian-army-commanders-in-syria-attend-saa-special-forces-drill/embed/#?secret=uIGjaslUBl#?secret=MoHhgTnUZa

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Sitrep Operation Z0V: Shifting sands and changing rhetoric

July 18, 2022

Source

By Saker Staff

The question went out .. what are the most important actions over the last week, and how do we present those?

Mr Shoigu was number one, and this is how we present that by a machine translation from cont.ws:

ON ANY HIMARS THERE IS A POSEIDON. THE US QUICKLY UNDERSTOOD SHOIGU’S STATEMENT

The tactical pause that the Russian military took a little over a week ago is coming to an end, according to the American Institute for the Study of War. And here they were not mistaken: the head of the Russian Defense Ministry, Sergei Shoigu, ordered to step up efforts in all sectors of the front.

The key task is to prevent the Armed Forces of Ukraine and Ukrainian neo-Nazis from continuing to launch rockets and conduct massive attacks on residential areas and peaceful infrastructure of the People’s Republics of Donbass and other regions.

And then the question arises about the use by the Ukrainian side of the” intimidating ” American multiple launch rocket system HIMARS. Who manages these MLRS?

The Ukrainian military is only engaged in the protection of HIMARS. And they are controlled and attacked, including by objects in the liberated territories of Ukraine, by US and British military personnel. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced this officially. Captain of the first rank of the reserve Vladimir Yeranosyan also has no doubts about this. Most likely, the Russians in Ukraine are opposed by the Marine corps, which in Iraq received good shooting skills with HIMARS, the captain claims.

America uses HIMARS to kill civilians

For some reason, we don’t focus on this publicly. However, Russia responded very simply to the supply of American HIMARS-we launched the Belgorod submarine with Poseidon unmanned torpedoes. By the way, she has already taken up combat duty, said Sergey Lipovoy, chairman of the presidium of the public organization “Officers of Russia”, in an interview with Tsargrad. This news was not advertised on all world channels, but those who need it already understand everything.

And after that, the rhetoric of Europe, Canada and America began to change. We were allowed to transport cargo to Kaliningrad, and Sweden lifted the ban on entering the ports of our ships that deliver fuel and food to Svalbard. They said, ” Guys, we’re overreacting. And this is only because our submarine, equipped with weapons that have no analogues in the world, has gone into the depths and no one knows where it is now,

– said Sergey Lipovoy. If we talk about MLRS, then HIMARS can be launched by the APU calculations, but under the supervision of American instructors. In this situation, we just need to find an “antidote”, the expert stressed.

It’s no secret that HIMARS have increased range and increased accuracy, ” Lipovoy continued. – The American assurances that HIMARS will be used exclusively for military purposes, and not for civilian objects, do not stand up to any criticism. We can see that in fact these MLRS are used specifically for the civilian population and for civilian objects. That is, America kills civilians and does everything to ensure that there is as much destruction as possible. And the death of civilians is at the hands and on the conscience of American politicians – first of all, President Joe Biden.

Of course, history will charge them for every civilian death. Because this is a war crime, a genocide against the peaceful Russian-speaking population. America is no longer even shy and actually says that it is waging war not with a mythical enemy, but with Russia. But this is done by the hands of NATO.

And here Ukraine turned out to be a bargaining chip, a pawn that was allowed to be slaughtered as soon as a special military operation began,

– Linden is convinced.

The Americans and NATO have stated that they will not participate in this matter in any way, but will do everything to ensure that the war continues as long as possible, so that there is as much destruction as possible. So that the war goes “for the happiness of the Ukrainian people to the last Ukrainian”.

PHOTO: CPL. COLTON GARRETT/GLOBALLOOKPRESS.

Americans are trying to control the fate of their weapons

Military expert Alexey Leonkov also commented on the information about the presence of foreigners in Ukraine at the HIMARS consoles in an interview with Tsargrad. According to him, there is indeed such operational information that along with HIMARS, American officers appeared in Ukraine, who manage MLRS.

In addition, there is also evidence that a certain number of US military personnel are engaged in escorting M777 howitzers and counter-battery stations.

That is, America, first of all, by handing over such equipment and weapons, is trying to control its fate in order to avoid the sad fate of some types of weapons that fall to us as trophies. And secondly, such officers can control the shooting. When receiving certain data, the Americans most likely do not share it with the Ukrainians, so as not to leak it,

– the expert believes. It turns out that the Americans secretly manage all these processes.

British officers can also be present there, but only if British air defense systems appear in Ukraine, because no matter how much the Ukrainian press screams that they are easier to control than a game console, this is not true.

It remains only to add that our opponents, represented by the collective West, perfectly heard the warning of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu about increasing efforts on all sectors of the front. The United States has already issued an urgent statement to all Americans on the territory of Ukraine: they say, leave, do not push your luck. Diplomats are also ordered to leave Odessa and Kiev. The stakes are rising, and Russia will not be deterred.

……………

Regulars will immediately see the increase in impact from the Russian MoD and other reporters.   Here is a summary from the Russian MoD

🔹 Russian precision strikes destroyed base of Ukrainian Kostyantynivka (DPR territory), eliminating around 250 foreign mercenaries, 7 armor units, 12 special vehicles;
🔹 Around 60 Nazi troops eliminated in Vitove (Cherkassy Oblast), 2 MLRS, 4 artillery pieces;
🔹 More than 10 Grad launchers destroyed in Udachne railway station;
🔹 2 Uragan MLRS and 17 Grad MRLS, Hyacinth-B and D-30 howitzers destroyed in artillery duels;
🔹 2 Mi-8 helicopters destroyed and 2 more damaged in airfield in Novy Donbas (DPR territory);
🔹 Army air force, missile forces and artillery landed strikes on 286 personnel and armor groupings and 14 operation rooms;
🔹 Buk-M1 SAM launcher destroyed in Kramatorsk (DPR territory), 3 weapons depots and fuel depot destroyed in Novooleksandrivka (Dniepr Oblast);
🔹 Air Defense shot down 6 UAVs and 2 Uragan missiles.

……………

The second place was taken by this piece by Andrey Martyanov and we take a quote from there but do read the full piece.

“Now, in a more important news, after the meeting with State Duma leaders on July 7, which officially was primarily about upcoming elections, Putin reiterated now well known position:

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet. At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.

It is more than position, it is Russia’s MO for the last 15 years and it is the one in which every next offer from Russia will always be much worse for those who didn’t accept the previous one.”

Andrei, (The Saker) calls this phenomenon The Pain Dial.  On the front, the Russian forces are double-timing it.  Take a look at the report – https://t.me/mod_russia_en/2803.

……………

Rybar created a special report on Avdiivka which you can see here:   https://t.me/militarysummary/698

Then, we looked at many various commentators, and we still stand by Military Summary, flaws and all.

Enjoy your discussion and as always commentators are welcome to add fine detail.

With cities and villages falling, here is a good rule of thumb to follow.  You can only take it seriously when you a) see the flag go up, i.e., pictures, and b) the MoD or reliable local authorities report.

Drips of information from Iran is coming through but let’s wait until there is some formal information.  Already fascinating is a comment from Peskov this morning:  Russia, Iran to shift away from estimating trade volume in dollars, says Kremlin

Russia’s Shoigu Orders Prioritizing Striking Ukrainian Long-range Weapons

July 17, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told military commanders to make Kiev’s long-range weapons their primary target, as he inspected troops of the ‘East’ grouping in Ukraine.

Shoigu gave orders to prioritize striking Ukrainian missile and artillery capabilities, due to their use by Kiev in targeting residential areas in Donbass and setting wheat fields and grain warehouses on fire, the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Ukraine’s long-range arms, which beside Soviet-designed systems include US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, French CAESAR self-propelled howitzers and other foreign hardware, should be hit with high-precision weapons, according to the minister.

On Monday, the People’s Republics of Donetsk said its territory had been shelled 53 times from the Ukrainian side over the past 24 hours, with more than 660 projectiles being fired.

During their meeting, the commander of the ‘East’ grouping, Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov, informed Shoigu “about the current situation and the progress achieved in fulfilling the assigned combat tasks of destroying the opposing forces,” the ministry said.

Shoigu’s unannounced tour of the Russian forces in Donbass was first revealed by the Defense Ministry on Sunday, when it said that the minister had inspected the ‘South’ and ‘Center’ groupings, meeting with their commanders, Army General Sergey Surovikin and Colonel General Alexander Lapin.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

Related

• ‘European Political Community’ A Deliberately Confrontational Initiative – Lavrov
• Russia’s Defense Minister Shoigu Pays Surprise Visit to Ukraine
• Putin heads to Tehran for talks with Iranian and Turkish leaders

Sweden and Finland joining NATO precedes an inevitable financial collapse of the current international system

June 29, 2022

Source

Sweden and Finland joining NATO besides being a provocative act towards Russia, precedes an inevitable financial collapse of the current international system

By Guilherme Wilbert

The Nordic entry into NATO, in the middle of a war, is clearly an act that does not help the peace negotiations that could be underway, but acts as the opposite, putting more wood on the fire for “military-technical” measures (to paraphrase Shoigu, Russian Defense Minister who uses the term when talking about responding to Western provocations).

With the entry of Finland and Sweden barred initially by Turkey, it shows that even a NATO member cares about enemies of its national interests. In Turkey’s case with the PKK, which is a Kurdish political organization seen as terrorist by Ankara and some countries, yet they were (until then) operating freely throughout the Nordic countries with active members of the official Kurdistan party holding protests in public squares in Helsinki and Stockholm.
Just for level of knowledge, Kurdistan is a region that would be home to the Kurdish ethnic group, taking part of Turkish territory up to the North of Iran, which explains Erdogan’s concern with a possible disintegration of Turkish territory if the Kurds were to gain prominence on the battlefields (which in real data would be very difficult since the Turkish army is the strongest in NATO for example).

But this provocation, which will surely be responded to by Moscow, proves the warmongers’ concern with continuing disputes and wars around the world, using Ukraine, which is the most recent case at the moment, as a kind of proxy to weaken Russia, serving only as a spearhead of the American objective, since Zelensky himself and his cabinet acknowledge that they will never join NATO and possibly not even the European Union, if you consider and draw a parallel with the case of Turkey itself, which has been waiting since 1999 for a resolution whether to join the bloc or not.

So, the entrance of the Nordics into NATO does not help Ukraine at all and can even make the situation worse with military-technical measures applied by the Russian Armed Forces perhaps in the decision centers in Brussels or in the Baltics, which would lead us to a nuclear catastrophe since the mentioned countries (Belgium and the Baltics for example) are NATO members and could invoke article 5 of mutual aid in case of “aggression” (See that aggression here is interpreted by Westerners (in an exercise of deduction) as only after the military-technical measure, ignoring what provoked the decision to do so).

Coupled with the desperation to provoke more wars, Western leaders get lost in the real global objective: economic integration and the fight against hunger

While great concern is seen with NATO, with diplomats having used the term “Global NATO” a few times, some primary and more basic goals of the organization’s member nations are put aside to add more gasoline to the fire.

The recent cases of inflation in Western Europe or even in the US precede a global financial collapse that has several causes, with some analysts citing the sanctions on Russia but personally I would go further and cite all of the last 10 years of at least NOTHING-backed dollar printouts that were used to give a supposed liquidity to the economy after the 2008 crash that was a scare felt around the world.

Economics, unlike some sciences, is not as if it can receive arguments and opinions, the theories are very clear and explanatory: by printing too much of your currency, you devalue it. But surely American economists know this and they also know that the coming collapse would affect the entire Globe because unfortunately after World War II, American hegemony was also monetary, with countries to this day using the dollar as an international reserve. In other words, in addition to the overprinting and national devaluation of the currency on American territory, it also devalues in the coffers of the countries that use it as a reserve and this will cause a cascading effect that will further force realpolitik into play and cause more haste in the emerging countries to get rid of the coming bomb.

Unfortunately war-hungry Western leaders are blind to what is coming and is already happening in some parts of the world, either because of irresponsible sanctions or the natural course of the very sequence of American economic mistakes. Because it is very different to sanction Russia compared to sanctioning Iran for example. And this does not mean that Iran deserves to be sanctioned in any way, because I believe that every country should have the right to its nuclear program, at least for peaceful purposes, and this cannot be used as a pretext for sanctions that crush already small economies, such as the example of Iran.

In the case of Russia the conversation is different for numerous reasons, be they military at the nuclear level or at the economic level, because Russia is part of a global production chain which acts as an active player on the macroeconomic stage. For example, the raw material called antimony, which is used in the global defense industry for military equipment of various kinds, is rightly found in excess in Russia and parts of Asia. This is to cite a simple example of an element that is not on the average citizen’s table, for example. In addition to the many important productions that Russia is responsible for.

So, given recent events and the inference for the disastrous future, the international scenario for the Global South forces them towards long term solutions of American de-dollarization and decolonization in the various ways, either by American NGOs that operate in several countries or by the very US culture exporting technologies that function as small fiefdoms of thought, the case of Facebook for example. But the latter is a little more difficult to achieve because it involves a collective societal thought that would require a national unity for the development of regional cultures.

Having said that, a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia with the Ukrainian loss of the territories that comprise New Russia needs to happen and sanctions against any country need to be lifted for the sake of multipolarity.

The world cannot be guided by one diplomatic corps and one government only because the international scenario is not a movie of one actor, but of several, with several potentials to be developed in different parts of the Globe.

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Guilherme Wilbert is a Brazilian Bachelor of Law interested in geopolitics and international law.

Teleconference: National Centre for State Defence Control chaired by General of the Army, Sergei Shoigu

June 07, 2022

National Centre for State Defence Control in Moscow hosts another teleconference of Defence Ministry with the leadership of the Armed Forces, chaired by General of the Army, Sergei Shoigu

Key points🔻

🔹 As for today, 97% of the territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic has been liberated.

🔹 Residential areas of Severodonetsk have been fully liberated. The takeover of its industrial zone and neighbouring settlements continues. The offensive in the Popasnaya direction is developing.

🔹51 units of foreign military equipment have been destroyed during the last 10 days of the special military operation.

🔹 In five days, 126 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine surrendered, their total number is 6,489 people.

🔹 In Mariupol, water and electricity supply to residential areas is being restored in stages, streets are being cleared and the first social facilities have started to function.

🔹 The Azovstal plant, including its underground facilities, has been completely cleared of mines.

🔹 Berdyansk sea port has started to operate. On behalf of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief they are ready to load grain at these ports.

🔹 The largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Zaporozhye, which can generate up to half of all nuclear power generation capacity of Ukraine, is operating normally.

🔹33 coal mines, 2 oil fields and 14 gas fields taken over by Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics during the special military operation continue to operate normally. The liberated territories are home to 57% of Ukraine’s steelmaking capacity.

🔹 While retreating, Ukrainian nationalists seek to cause maximum damage to these industries. In turn, the Russian military, while liberating the Donbass, is taking industry facilities under its protection, thus preserving the potential for the development of the region’s economy.

🔹 Joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian Railways have created conditions for the resumption of full-fledged traffic between Russia, Donbass, Ukraine and Crimea on six railway sections.

🔹 The restoration of transport infrastructure and water supply creates favourable conditions for the development of agricultural sector in the liberated territories.

🔹 More than 27,000 tons of goods have been handed over to civilians.

🔹 During the summer training period, we will pay special attention to new ways of conducting combat operations based on the experience of the special military operation and other armed conflicts, army tactical shooting and first aid on the battlefield.

🔹 47 warships, boats and submarines will take part in the Main Naval Parade to be held in St Petersburg on July 31. Also for the first time, the female crew of the patrol boat Raptor will take part in the parade.

It’s education, stupid!

June 02, 2022

Source

By Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ

Maybe it is time the Collective West does something about its educational system.

Watching the performances of Russians and Western officials, one immediately notices that the much-touted and ultra-expensive “education “ provided in the West today is actually not up to par.

The Russian actions in Ukraine revealed a West where leaders remain emotional juveniles who continue to REACT jerkily to Russia’s deft moves. That’s when they are not busy projecting their own values and behavior onto the Russians.

Not only have the Russians vastly outplayed the West militarily, economically, and geopolitically, the actions/reactions of the West have boomeranged mightily to Russia’s advantage. The hyperinflation ravaging the West is just one example.

The exposure of the impotence of the much-touted NATO is also glaring for all to see; the Russians have made a mincemeat of what was touted as the best army in Europe, trained and equipped to NATO’s standards.

It is like every move by the Americans and their vassals in the EU was calculated to benefit the Russians.

This happened because they were ill-taught, and irrational resulting in pure emotional lash outs.

There’s simply no logic behind them.

A good example is how Western sanctions resulted in Russia earning jumbo income from selling less of its oil and gas.

Thank you very much!.

In addition to always being on top of their game, Russian officials always come across as well-educated, well-informed, well-mannered, sophisticated, cultured, and respectful. Western officials, on the other hand, attack the world as haughty, naughty, ill-mannered, ill-educated, uncultured, provincial, and narcissistic imbeciles.

They lack the elementary decorum necessary to engage peers in respectful manners. Ok, superciliousness, fueled by racist arrogance, might partly explain why they behave so, but we cannot discount the possibilities that they simply lack the education, the culture, and the home training required for civilized behavior, especially in encounters with other cultures.

The question needs to be asked how the Collective West ended up with the current gaggle of clowns holding positions of responsibility?

Examples abound aplenty: Just take a look at Sergey Lavrov and compare him with that dwarfish oaf, Anthony Blinken. Please, how did the once great US get to appoint that trashy lightweight idiot supposed to engage with a towering Diplomat of Mr Lavrov’s caliber?  Can’t a kindhearted one whisper in his ears how utterly ridiculous he appears and sounds when he issues stupid threats?

And how do we compare the seriously martial Sergei Shoigu with that Raytheon’s Uncle Tom arms merchant, Lloyd Austin?

And we then have the magnificent, confident, articulate, urbane and sophisticated woman Mr Lavrov appointed to speak for his Foreign Ministry. Please, do not take my word for it, just point out a Western official, male or female (forget the other stupid pronouns concocted by Western woke narcissists pumped up with hedonism), who can match Maria Zakharova in confident eloquence?

It didn’t use to be like this. The West was once great. I should know; I studied there.

Even as a student I noticed that there’s something terribly wrong with the type of education western institutions dish out to students starting in the late 1980s. It is quite noticeable, even to an undergraduate like myself, that there is a TOTAL disconnection between what is being taught at the universities and what transpires in REAL LIFE.

Take what is called Economics as an example. A degree, Bachelor of Science (B.Sc), is awarded to students who successfully complete the four-year program.

Any honest person will know that there’s absolutely nothing scientific in the potpourri of jargon western economists continue to string together to dazzle the gullible.

Meaningless figures and data are churned out to bamboozle people into believing that producing “services” is somehow superior to having mineral resources and a strong manufacturing base. The magicians, who masquerade as economists in the West, successfully cast spells that made people accept fancifully-printed papers, that are backed by nothing, in lieu of gold, diamond, cocoa, coal, titanium, and other real products.

These types of deliberate falsehoods and concoctions explain why Western economies are based on illusions and delusions as the Great V Putin exposed in recent encounters with the Collective West.

Arrogant and totally ignorant Westerners had no idea what the Russians had in stock for them when they started their stupid sanctions which they believed would destroy the Russian economy.

A little knowledge of history, geography, geopolitics, and geoeconomics should have informed the West that a country (the largest in the world) that is not only self-sufficient in food production, but produces almost all the metals required by all of the major industries and, in addition, is the world’s leading energy (oil and gas) producer, is not one to trifle or pick a fight with.

Most especially, not by a bunch of self-worshipping, resource-less, parasitical inconsequential nonentities like the EU states, who suffer from excessive self-regard.

There is little doubt the arrogance of the Collective West is fueled by ignorance which is a result of the poor quality of the education produced by the ideological institutions the West call universities, which have been transformed from places of rigorous learning into ones that produce only selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, hedonistic ideologues who are incapable of any thought beyond the ME!

Education reflects the mental attitude of the people. A society that recognizes neither wrong nor right, truth or falsehood cannot produce upright people who are capable of subjecting their thoughts and actions to deep reflections and applying the necessary breaks to curb their animalistic impulses.

Right from infancy, Westerners are brought up to regard everything as relative and to mix up rhetoric with actions.

Children in nurseries are told tales about the cow jumping over the moon. They are later introduced to the fable of a Santa Claus who deliver gifts through the chimney (let’s not mention the gross racism inherent in the Dutch version of that silly ‘tradition’). From here the westerner is told only tales about how his superior race brought the light of civilization to the rest of the world. Never mind the fact that half of the human drama passed before a European appeared on the scene. And never mind the documented fact that Europeans extinguished the light of civilization wherever they went. Let’s not even consider the absurdity of vandals and rapacious conquerors claiming to be civilizers! What civilization did Europe bring to the Americas? What superior knowledge, apart from that of guns, did the British bring to the Benin Kingdom?

A system of education that teaches everything about personal freedom but remains silent on responsibilities, basic values, and respect for elders and institutions cannot but produce self-seeking, self-affirming narcissistic individuals who will regard any suggestion or notion of rights of others as personal assaults.

A system of education that mistakes cheating and lying for cleverness can not but produce the type of Ambassador Michael McFaul who laughs,  when confronted with the lies the West told over Ukraine’s NATO membership and exclaimed: “That is the real world. Welcome to the real world.” https://nationalfile.com/thats-the-real-world-michael-mcfaul-laughs-off-lies-over-ukraine-nato-membership/

Basically, McFaul told us that the west exists in a real world where the telling of lies is the normal thing! Per his profile, McFaul is a professor in one of the top universities in the US. What type of minds will a man like McFaul produce?

Societies reflect the people that live in them. Western societies produced rugged individualistic-minded people who, in turn, find it difficult to cope with an international arena where the game is to give and take. Despite the fact that they proclaim their superiority over the rest of us, Western societies are incapable of operating on a level playing field. They cannot compete unless the cards are stacked in their favor. If they deny it, they simply should abandon their sense of entitlement and join the rest of humanity in playing by the rules agreed upon by the comity of nations.

Just take a good look at the current crop of Western leaders. The senile mannequin Biden has been a professional politician like for forever and a half. Macron is an investment banker, essentially one who conjures money from thin air, or what are derivatives, futures, etc?

The one in Germany, Scholz, is a lawyer. We all know that lawyers are born liars who make money by manipulating facts and telling barefaced lies. A great pity that we did not listen to Shakespeare and kill all the lawyers!

That lying, cheating, racist, boorish, unscrupulous, drunken addict like Boris Johnson became the leader of a former Great Britain shall forever remain one of the greatest mysteries of our time. It shall also go down as one of the worst things the British did to themselves.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I shed no tears for the inhabitants of that Island of iniquities.

Sadly, for them, the Collective West used to have very solid leaders. No matter how much one disagrees with them or hated their ideology, one cannot but respect Ronald Reagan, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, and George Bush sr.

These men and women were true statesmen, prepared to defend their national interests while recognizing the need not to negate the interests of their peer actors in the global geopolitical arena.

Both Reagan and Thatcher were extreme ideologues, but they still both recognized that they cannot wish the USSR (Russia) away without destabilizing the global security architecture. They acted accordingly.

Alas, today, there’s not a single leader in the West with either the intellectual depth or the cultural sophistication to handle complex geopolitical issues.

Examples:

• At his first meeting with Chinese officials, the arrogant but amateurish US Secretary of State was promptly shot down by a Chinese official who told him point-blank: “The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.”
• In their encounter,  Russia’s FM Lavrov publicly humiliated the queen that poses as the UK’s FM, Truss, by exposing her shallowness and ignorance of basic geography.

With leaders such as these, it is little wonder that the west continues to self-destruct with the speed that few people thought possible.

First, western officials’ lack of simple courtesy, manners, and etiquette is quite stunning.

In many cultures, bullies are considered uncultured philistines and are promptly dispensed with. Even at the height of their war with Iraq we witnessed how US Secretary James Addison Baker continued to extend diplomatic and personal courtesies to his Iraqi counterpart, Tarik Aziz.

Puffed up with insane arrogance, the West rushed to impose thousands of sanctions on Russia. The belief was that the sanctions would cripple Russia and make it forgo the pursuits of its national interests.

So many things are terribly wrong with this assumption and it can only be the product of utterly stupid brains. Just a few: How could anyone in their right mind think that the Russians would have failed to consider ALL possibilities before they decided to confront the west in an existential struggle?

Forget about the Ukraine, Russian officials told whoever would listen that the Ukraine is just a sideshow; upending western domination is the ultimate goal. The Russians simply had enough of bullying and they planned to put an end to it.

Russians are world champions in both mathematics and chess playing, one must be utterly daft to even think that a Judoka like V Putin will go into battle without adequate preparations and preparedness.

Three months later, not only did Russia shrug off all the touted “sanctions from hell,’ but its economy is back on track, steady income are streaming into its treasury, and its currency, the Ruble, has emerged as the best currency in the world!

Instead of the Ruble turning into rubble as the dimwit Biden promised, Russians today worry more about the strength of their currency.

So, how did the West get it so spectacularly wrong?

It’s education, stupid.

While other societies stepped up on the teachings of mathematics and science, the West focused its attention on WOKISM.

The teaching of new pronouns became more important to a people that have become over-obsessed with their genitalias. Not even children were spared in the degenerate obsession to sexualize everything.

The west abandoned the teaching of history. So, people grew up not knowing anything about their past. Years of obscenely grotesque overconsumption produced inert citizens who became too decadent for their own good.

The consequences of these long years of easy living (off the back of foreign resources) are people who deluded themselves that their easy living was made possible by some immutable law of nature.

Westerners forgot that the institutions and the unfair international economic setups which guarantee them to live like exceptionalists were created by crafty, highly-educated, and far-seeing men and women who managed to collar the best advantages for the West.

Example: We saw how spectacularly the Euro has nosedived since V Putin asked Europeans to pay for his gas in his currency.

Not only have the ill-thought sanctions boomeranged badly on the sanctioneers, but the west has also ended up financing Russia’s military campaign in the Ukraine.

More sanctions from hell, please!

---

Fẹmi Akọmọlafẹ is a writer and a published author. He is a member of the Ghana Association of Writers.

His latest book, “Africa: a Continent on Bended Knees” is available on:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Continent-Bended-Femi-Akomolafe-ebook/dp/B08FGZNJ5T
On Ghana Association of Writers Website: https://www.gaw.org.gh/product/africa-a-continent-on-bended-knees/

Sitrep Operation Z: + consequences = petty Tabaquis howling

May 26, 2022

by Saker Staff

After the Russian forces took POPASNA, the pace increased. There are still battles, but the Russians are now rolling over everything else in the Donbas. The Ukrainians are being annihilated, more and more soldiers are refusing to fight, reports of mass surrenders pour in, and the Russian strategy of cauldrons and partial cauldrons is proving incredibly effective. It is a bloody war in that area exacerbated by the Ukrainian leaders because orders for a sensible retreat are not forthcoming.

Two videos today – both quite detailed:

This first video from Military Summary on Rumble, describes the logjam against sensible retreat.

This second video describes some of the very recent battles and how these brought the Ukraine to this point.  Very detailed and he draws his maps on the fly as he talks.

A few hours ago reports started filtering in of huge forces of the Russian Aerospace Forces passing over Lugansk towards the front, and powerful explosions thundered everywhere. The correspondent of “Russian Spring” rusvesna.su from the capital of the LPR reports that he sees this for the first time, a lot of combat aircraft and helicopters swept over the city in several waves. Of course we do not know yet the what, why and where of this, excepting the Russian MoD report of this morning tells the story of the increased pace.

Take a look at the numbers:

💥High-precision air-based missiles have hit 48 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration, 2 artillery batteries, and 2 ammunition depots near Nikolaevka and Berestovoe in Donetsk People’s Republic during the day.

▫️1 Ukrainian electronic reconnaissance centre near Dneprovskoe, Nikolaev Region, has been destroyed, including 11 servicemen from the combat unit, as well as 15 foreign engineering specialists who arrived with security guards.

▫️In addition, 1 Osa-AKM anti-aircraft missile system launcher has been destroyed near Nikolaevka in Donetsk People’s Republic, and 1 radar of the Ukrainian S-300 anti-aircraft missile system near Chuhuev in Kharkov region.

✈️💥Operational-tactical and army aviation have hit 49 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration, 2 mortar crews, as well as 1 depot of missile and artillery weapons and ammunition.

▫️The attacks have resulted in the elimination of more than 350 nationalists and up to 96 armoured and motor vehicles.

💥Russian air defence means have shot down 1 Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter over Husarovka, Kharkov Region. 1 Ukrainian Air Force military transport aircraft delivering ammunition and weapons has been also shot down in mid-air near Kremidovka, Odessa Region.

▫️In addition, 13 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles have been shot down near Zelenyi Gai in Kherson Region, Bolshie and Malye Prokhody, Gavrilovka, Veseloe in Kharkov Region, and Epifanovka and Kirovsk in Lugansk People’s Republic, including 2 Soviet-made Tu-143 Reis jets near Melovatka in Lugansk People’s Republic.

💥Missile troops and artillery have hit 62 command posts, 407 areas of AFU manpower and military equipment concentration, 47 artillery and mortar units at firing positions, as well as 3 ammunition depots.

▫️Units and military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ 10th Mountain Assault Brigade, which arrived to reinforce the Ukrainian grouping in Donbass, have been destroyed during unloading near Pokrovsk railway station in Donetsk People’s Republic.

……………

Ukrainian General Staff says “The invaders are actively advancing in several directions at once.” — Specifically, the Russians are advancing simultaneously in Severodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdeevsky, Novopavlovsk and Liman directions.

……………

We also had a short explanation of why the perceived slow down in the Russian operation. The slowdown of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is intentional with a view to evacuating the population and avoiding casualties among civilians, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.  Russia’s Armed Forces are creating humanitarian corridors and announcing ceasefires to ensure the safe evacuation of residents from encircled settlements, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu explained, despite this approach stalling the progress of the country’s forces.  “Of course, this slows down the pace of the offensive, but it is being done deliberately to avoid civilian casualties,” he explained at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Council of Defense Ministers.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev spoke on the Ukraine specifically and geopolitics:

▪️All the goals set by the President of the Russian Federation during the special military operation will be achieved, it cannot be otherwise. Russia is not chasing deadlines in the course of a special military operation in Ukraine.

The ideal scenario for US-led NATO is an endlessly smoldering conflict in Ukraine.

▪️Nazism must either be eradicated by 100%, or it will raise its head in a few years, and in an even uglier form.

▪️Ukraine, if it had remained an independent country, and not controlled from outside, “would have long ago expelled all Nazi evil spirits from its land.”

▪️Moscow will be obliged to respond to the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, which is a direct security threat to Russia. Finland and Sweden will be accepted into NATO, despite the objections of Turkey and Croatia, “because Washington decided so.”

▪️The West is today obscuring Russia’s contribution to the preservation of other states in different historical periods with all its might.

……………

The political and geopolitical situation is heating up and at the same time becoming more surreal.

They’re even dusting off Kissinger at Davos.  (Note Pepe Escobar’s ascerbic entry to his telegram channel at the end.)**

There is a small window of opportunity to wind down the armed conflict in Ukraine and find a peace settlement, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has told a gathering of Western elites in Davos, Switzerland. Beyond that, Russia may break from, the rest of, Europe for good and become a permanent ally of China, he said on Monday during a speech at the World Economic Forum.

“Negotiations on peace need to begin in the next two months or so, [before the conflict] creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” the 98-year-old veteran diplomat said of the crisis. The outcome will determine the rest of Europe’s relationships with Russia and Ukraine alike, he said. “Ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo ante,” he said.

“I believe pursuing the war beyond that point would turn it not into a war about the freedom of Ukraine, which had been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into a war against Russia itself,” he added.

There are more voices from Europe asking for a peace process to start but first, the Ukrainian response:

Ukrainian presidential advisor Alexey Arestovich resorted to obscene language to criticize those in the West urging Kiev to cede part of the country’s territory to Russia for the sake of peace.

“Go f**k yourselves with such proposals, you dumb f**ks, to trade Ukrainian territory a little bit! Are you f**king crazy? Our children are dying, soldiers are stopping shells with their own bodies, and they are telling us how to sacrifice our territories. This will never happen,” Arestovich said in an interview on Wednesday.

Soros calls for Putin’s defeat:  George Soros told the World Economic Forum in Davos the West needs a quick victory over Russia in Ukraine so it can focus on climate change

The process of ‘disowning’ the Ukraine has started.

Gen. Milley notes that the US has reopened military-to-military level talks with the Russians. His call to his Russian counterpart last week was “important” and it was “purposeful”

Of course, the talk of another peace plan is not born of care for people or human rights or democracy or deep held care for the Ukrainian people.  It is driven by desperation and is a desperate grasp at avoiding a psychological defeat bigger than Afghanistan.

TASS/ Russia’s State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin took to his Telegram channel to highlight that the US and its partners do not plan to provide real assistance to Ukraine.

• Ukraine will only get 15% of the $40 billion promised by the US, he said.
• “Washington and Brussels do not really intend to help Ukraine, or solve its economic and social issues. They only need Ukraine to fight Russia till the last Ukrainian,” Volodin said.
• According to the recent aid to Ukraine legislation signed by President Joe Biden, 35% of the $40 billion is going to finance the US Armed Forces, he explained. Meanwhile, 45.2% of that amount is set to be spent on other countries, not Ukraine, while another 4.8% will be earmarked to support refugees, and restore the US diplomatic mission in Ukraine. “Ukraine will only receive 15% of the allotted sum,” the speaker revealed.
• But Ukrainians will have to pay off the whole sum, he said. The US is aware that Kiev will not be able to service the debt in the future. “That is why they are seizing Ukraine’s last reserves, including grain, which is what we are seeing right now”.

Quo Vadis Ukraine?

A list of those that want a piece of the pie is shaping up. Of course, Poland is not suddenly in love with the Ukraine without a reason.  They want their piece of the land pie. I suspect Hungary is also not innocent in this matter. Will the Ukraine be apportioned? Or will it lose its nation-state status completely, and cease to exist? Nobody knows because nobody knows the Russian plan. In Europe and the US/NATO, fear is taking hold. Nobody knows where Russia plans to stop after liberating the two new Republics, Donesk and Luhansk. Is this the moment that they will choose to push NATO back to its agreed borders?

Maria Zakharova noted that these peace proposals that are appearing (talking about the Italian one specifically) could show that Rome is perhaps “beginning to think about the depressing consequences of the military psychosis that was caused by the reaction of the West to the special military operation of Russia in Ukraine” – and the supposed plan could be an attempt “to offer some alternatives to the current escalation, which threatens to develop into a full-scale military conflict between Russia and NATO.”

The deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said that “any peace proposal built purely in the interest of NATO and the Western world order should simply be ignored.”

“Or rather, their authors should be told to go in a certain direction,” Medvedev said.

Russia is ‘building back better’ and major reconstruction is starting as well as President Putin signed a decree relaxing rules for granting Russian citizenship to residents of Ukraine’s Zaporozhye and Kherson Region.

The amendments are added to the decree that previously introduced a similar procedure for residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR).

Russia continues to do business.  Delegations from over 90 countries have confirmed their participation in the 25th edition of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) scheduled for June.  Russia and Iran also agreed to implement the MIR payment card system in Iran.

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

**Escobar Telegram Channel:

THE PLIGHT OF DR. K – IN ONE MINUTE

War criminal Kissinger’s performance at Davos should be summed up as yet another massive failure of his master’s trademark Divide and Rule.

Ukraine/404 has always been a sort of Rubicon in terms of downsizing Russia (think Brzezinski).

It consumed A LOT of capital – physical and political. It was THE red line – success or failure – setting the stage for the triumph of the NWO and its top secretion, The Great Reset.

Kissinger – even as a mere Rockefeller messenger boy – was at the center of this racket for DECADES. It was Kissinger, under Rockefeller’s orders, that groomed cypto Dr. Evil Klaus Schwab to build the WEF and the Davos ethos.

Even if Davos is a mere outlet for the people who really run the show, the WEF remains the premier Influence Scoundrels club on the planet bent on forcing their agenda all across the spectrum. Still toxic after all these years. Yet now even Kissinger knows it’s bound to fail.

Is US Commitment to Ukraine War at Tipping Point?

22 May 2022

Source: Al Mayadeen

Alastair Crooke 

For now, the goal for Ukraine and its NATO allies should be to contain the Russian offensive within southeastern Ukraine, push Putin’s forces back where possible – and make this war too painful for Russia to continue indefinitely’.

The war in Ukraine has unfolded, but not in the way western commentary foresaw

Are we seeing an inflection point in the conflict over Ukraine, which growing numbers of US lawmakers tell us is, in truth, a US ‘war’ on Russia?  What the latter means however, is not clear, but it sounds like the early laying down of a narrative for possible military escalation. But is military escalation still feasible? 

It is perhaps too early to claim strategic ‘inflection’ — but what does seem to be happening is that mis-matched timelines are grinding out their ineluctable and harsh realities.

At the very outset of the Russian operations, Biden authorised emergency spending, and of US military trainers on the spot providing intelligence and tactical targeting guidance to help the Ukrainian army destroy Russian forces. The Ukrainians get it all — every twitch in Russian operational deployment is handed immediately to Russia’s enemies.

Concomitantly, as a contribution to info-war, military experts appeared across western MSM to herald an imminent “Ukrainian victory” based on the country’s allegedly ‘spectacular battlefield successes’ and Russia’s ‘extraordinary incompetence’. The US and British rush to judgement partly reflected a real failure on their part to recognise that Russia was mounting a soft, slow and steady campaign of manoeuvre — because simply that is not ‘how we in the West do things’.  

However, much of it almost certainly reflected an uncritical 100% reliance on Ukrainian sources, and on wishful thinking. After the enormous eight-year investment in the training and equipping of the quarter-million Ukrainian army to NATO standards, the latter surely would prevail (they imagined) against a mere 140,000 Russians.  The desire to erase the humiliation of the twenty year NATO training programme in Afghanistan – that unravelled in eleven days – almost certainly contributed to the western gung ho rhetoric: ‘Vindication at last’.

In the last few days, US Defence Secretary Austin called General Shoigu (the first call, since the start of operations that Shoigu has accepted to take). Austin asked for an immediate ceasefire. Shoigu however, declined the request.

At about the same moment, Chancellor Scholz called President Putin (and had a long discussion).  Scholz also wanted an immediate ceasefire, but his focus was more on agreeing some swap, by which the besieged Avozstal fighters could withdraw from the underground Avozstal tunnels.  

The western efforts to secure release of these fighters has been at the forefront of initiatives over the last week. Scholz also raised his hopes for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine issue, but Putin was no more yielding than was Shoigu. (Interestingly, Scholz also, according to the read-out, broached the coming global food emergency in his call).

Europe has painted itself into a corner on its political initiatives. The obvious retort to Europe’s plea to Putin is: Go and persuade Zelensky. But Europe has unreservedly pinned itself to Zelensky alone determining the terms of any ceasefire — and he says he will not yield anything to Russia, and will only speak with Putin without any framework agreed in advance.

Nonetheless, here we have two Western leaders suing for a cessation of military action. 

The war in Ukraine has unfolded, but not in the way western commentary foresaw. Ukrainian forces look shattered and exhausted. Supplies and reinforcements are not reaching the Ukrainian troops who now are largely unable to move, or re-deploy away from fixed defensive positions along the Slovyansk-Severodonetsk–Donetsk lines.  And these lines are looking vulnerable to collapse. 

Confronted with the unambiguous failure of assistance to rescue Ukrainian forces from certain destruction, the Biden administration is pivoting its narrative: the New York Times is saying that Russian forces have advanced to the border between Donetsk and Luhansk, [which] if confirmed makes it more probable that Russia could entirely control Donbas. And the Washington Post reports that Biden wants now to pivot to Asia, ‘after the Ukraine war marked a rallying moment for the geo-political West. It triggered a new steely approach by Europeans to confront Russia and spurred the imminent expansion of NATO.

And David Ignatius, a bell weather for Washington shifts, also reports: ‘The world will eventually celebrate a final Ukrainian victory and the expulsion of the last Russian invader. But that could be years, even decades, away. We aren’t going to see a peace treaty signed any time soon. For a long while, Ukraine is likely to be a partially divided country. For now, the goal for Ukraine and its NATO allies should be to contain the Russian offensive within southeastern Ukraine, push Putin’s forces back where possible – and make this war too painful for Russia to continue indefinitely’.

Scholtz’s telecon too, suggests that the EU is waking up to the merciless reality of timelines in the sphere of sanctions. Instead of being able to trigger an almost instantaneous collapse of the Russian economy, the latter is doing okay — quite okay, despite sanctions. It looks as if it is the EU’s plans rather, for an oil embargo, that are rapidly unravelling. And instead of a quick win (again as confidently forecast by the experts), the EU now faces the long grinding down of its economy, through energy, food and inflationary crises.

It does sound like Biden is talking-the-talk of a ‘pivot’, having ‘got the reality’. The rushing through of the $40 billion package may well represent a consolation prize (slush fund) for the Military Industrial Complex and for certain allies in Ukraine to be rewarded, but the question is, will Washington subsequently walk-the-walk?  

An escalation through Poland seizing its ‘historic lands’ in Ukraine (the western part), could be used to present the American people with a war that Americans do not want, but cannot easily stop. Such Polish intervention would please Neo-con currents in the US and UK, though the expected follow-through for this current would be far from smooth sailing, if pursued.

Conflict involving Russians and Poles in any form would likely trigger a call for the NATO council to meet, and to address Article V of the NATO Treaty that provides for support from all members, should a NATO member (in this case Poland) be attacked.

Note however, that such support is not automatic. In the case of Turkey having shot down a Russian fighter jet, Turkey attempted to frame any Russian retribution as an Article V event — however NATO member states disagreed, arguing that Turkey was the author of its own misfortune, and that it would have to deal with the consequences alone.

War with Russia is precisely what the Pentagon and most NATO members do not want. This is a strong card in the Russian hand.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

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.

Virtual Russia, virtual Russian Armed Forces, bad information, bad planning, bad outcomes.

May 15, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

War Inc. Throws an Invasion Party and No One Shows Up

February 16, 2022

Pepe Escobar

Moscow has not deviated for a moment from its Sun Tzu approach – while detailing all demands and all red lines many times over.

The Dem combo remote-controlling the senile President of the United States by earpiece/teleprompter was never accused of being the brightest bulbs in the room – any room.

That explains why one of their own, Nancy Pelosi, on ABC News, gave the whole Russian “invasion” game away two – or three – days, depending on their math, before the “canceled” non-event.

First she said, “If we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade.” And then the clincher:

“If Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.”

Here, fully unveiled, is the whole Dem “strategy”: a dubiously effective foreign policy “victory” which will melt away months ahead of the inevitable debacle at the US midterms.

Maria Zakharova, that female Slav counterpart of Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods in Ancient Greece, got closer to the truth while framing the psyops: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired.”

Add to it Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, unplugged, on “information terrorism”: “We have to learn from the tricks [our Western colleagues] pull.”

Putin, once again, applied Sun Tzu to win without a battle: “win” as in attending the objectives set for this round.

But it gets dicier. The Duma, by 78%, voted to ask the President to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as “separate, sovereign and independent” states.

The final decision rests with Putin, who has already hinted what happens next. Even as he qualified “what is happening now in Donbass” as “a genocide” – taking into context the previous eight years – he pointed out how “we must do everything to solve the problems of Donbass, but first of all, based on (…) the implementation of the Minsk agreements.”

What this means is that Putin will give Kiev yet another – final? – chance to implement Minsk: the agreement – enshrined as UN law – that the Americans have been de facto sabotaging since 2015.

Russia’s Security Council won’t be fooled, characterizing how “the West is conducting a carefully planned information operation against Russia based on the concept of ‘hybrid war’.” The Security Council also reaffirms that “European countries will be responsible for very likely provocations against the DPR and LPR from Kiev.” This is Patrushev speaking, not a deer-caught-in-the-headlights Jake Sullivan.

Neo-nazis on parade

German Chancellor Scholz’s visit to Moscow was not exactly a Porsche negotiating Nurburgring. One never gets away spewing out platitudes in front of Putin. Scholz: “For our generation, war in Europe is unimaginable”. Putin: “One has already been unleashed by NATO against Belgrade.”

After weeks of non-stop American hysteria cum war fever, it might be tempting to consider that Macron and Scholz could be on the same page with Putin, demanding that Kiev sit on the same table with Donetsk and Luhansk and work on the necessary constitutional amendments to grant them autonomy. That would be the only path towards a possible solution. Yet there’s no guarantee it will be taken, because of the immovable American veto.

Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian Federation Council, once again has stressed the only possible way Russia would “intervene”: in the “event of an invasion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the DPR and LPR, Russia’s response will be proportionate to the scale of aggression.”

Even Scholz, timidly, has somehow agreed that like NATO in Yugoslavia, Russia in this case would have the right to invoke Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to save millions of Russian passport holders from the oligarchic Banderastan/neo-nazi shock troops of what Andrei Martyanov memorably described as country 404.

These include the Azov Batallion – which recruits neo-nazis from all across Europe – sporting Wolfsangel arm patches straight from the SS, and is now incorporated in Ukraine’s National Guard. The vast, CIA/MI6 “revitalized” stay-behind networks. And of course the in-progress $10 billion Eric Prince (Blackwater/Academi) scheme of setting up a private mercenary army via a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company and CIA-controlled Ukraine intel.

The two crucial developments

The serial American fake news/pysops/fog of war offensive did manage to obscure the two really crucial developments of the heady past few days.

1. The de facto invasion of Russian territorial waters by a US Virginia-class sub, described as a “completely unreasonable and incomprehensible activity” by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
2. Mr. Kinzhal’s recent flight to Kaliningrad onboard a Mach 3-capable MIG-31K “Foxhound”. In case NATOstan clowns continue to entertain funny ideas, they could place a call to Mr. Khinzal. He’ll answer the call with hypersonic speed. Literally.

Before the scheduled Russian non-invasion “invasion” was canceled, Martyanov had deliciously outlined how the “strategic ambivalence of Russia is terrifying for the US now because the US doesn’t know what will follow after the false flag, granted this false flag succeeds to dupe European poodles into utter submission.”

Yes, it ain’t over till the fat transgender sings. A false flag, or flags, remain on the radar – considering the tons of weapons showered on 404; over 150,000 troops massed right in front of the line of contact, equipped with absolutely lethal 120mm Grad rockets with warheads that when exploded, release thousands of sharp metal fragments; and the thousands of mercenaries trained by Polish, Brit and Blackwater/Academi instructors.

What really happened in the Kuril islands, between Hokkaido and Kamchatka, diplomatically described by Shoigu, eventually landed on Russian media. The first explanation was that a Russian vessel might have launched warning torpedoes against the American sub.

What happened was that the Virginia-class was detected by a Russian SSK or SSN, there was a sweep, and then the Marshal Shaposhnikov frigate used a sonar to intimate the uninvited guest to beat it. That was rather polite. In any other circumstances the Virginia-class would have been sunk.

Of course this should be interpreted for what it is: one more graphic illustration that the “indispensable nation” has lost its maritime invulnerability. Certainly to Russia. And sooner rather than later, also to China.

And that is a direct consequence of the dire state of the US defense industry, Martyanov’s key area of study, and exemplified by the latest report by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The full report is here. Take a look, for instance, at this table charting the emphasis on research in emerging technologies.

Key areas such as space, hypersonics and cyber are down. In parallel, there’s an “increase” in three interconnected areas: AI, fully networked C3 and microelectronics. This would suggest the same old American obsession, since Rumsfeld, with deploying in a “smart battlefield”.

The key takeaway may be the increase in biotechnology. Because that would point to a desperate Empire – already outclassed by Russia and soon neutralized by China – resorting to biowarfare. It’s no wonder the landmark February 4 Russia-China joint statement pointedly refers to the danger of US bioweapon labs.

To the dustbin, Batman!

Moscow has not deviated for a moment from its Sun Tzu approach – while detailing all demands and all red lines many times over. Washington and Brussels have been warned in no uncertain terms that if they entice their goons/mercenaries to attack Donbass, 404 will be smashed to smithereens. And that is only the easily dismissible part of the package: all NATOstan security systems will also go.

Russia is waiting – like an army of Taoist monks. After the canceled “invasion”, it can even afford to enjoy some comic relief. The “technical and military” responses are ready – and once again: it’s their strategic ambiguity that is driving the Americans crazy. They are coming to realize they must negotiate indivisibility of security and missiles in Eastern Europe because no one in the Ukrainized Empire knows what Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov could do next.

And then, there are the headless chickens. In the aftermath of the “invasion” not showing up as scheduled, G-7 Foreign Ministers will have an “emergency” meeting later his week in Germany to scratch their collective heads on why the invasion did not show up as scheduled.

As it stands, in the calm before the next storm, let’s sit back, relax and remember February 16, 2022: the day when the latest, concerted, full spectrum fake news psyops ended up hurling NATOstan’s “credibility” to a one-way trip to the dustbin of History.

Russian Defence Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu held talks in Moscow with his British counterpart Ben Wallace + short sitrep

February 12, 2022

https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12408394@egNews

The Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, held talks in Moscow with his British counterpart Ben Wallace.

During the meeting, the head of the Russian military department said that the situation on the European continent is becoming increasingly tense, and it was not Russia’s fault.

“I welcome you to Moscow, to the Ministry of Defence. The military-political situation in Europe is becoming more and more tense. And far from our fault. We don’t quite and always understand the reasons for this tension. But, nevertheless, we see that it is growing,” Sergei Shoigu said.

The Russian Defence Minister expressed hope that during the meeting it would be possible to discuss “topical issues of reducing this tension, as well as our proposals to the United States of America and NATO on ensuring security in Europe, which we sent in December and received a response in January. Now it’s all considered. I think that our response will also follow in the near future.”

The head of the Russian military department noted that before the meeting he carefully read the speeches of the British Defence Minister and his colleagues.

“Unfortunately, we still see in every speech, through the line, threats of sanctions. I would not like our conversation today to be a continuation of this kind of interview,” said General of the Army Sergei Shoigu.

During the talks with his British counterpart, the Russian Defence Minister suggested that Western countries contribute to reducing tensions in Europe and stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.

“For our part, we would also like to offer to contribute to reducing this tension and stopping the stuffing of weapons in Ukraine. It is coming from all sides, it is being done publicly. This is done in a demonstrative manner. It’s not quite clear what for. I would also like to understand why Britain, the kingdom, is sending its special forces to Ukraine, and for how long will it be there?”, the head of the Russian military department added.

Sergei Shoigu also expressed concern about the possible use by terrorists of weapons left by the troops of the Western coalition in Afghanistan.

“I would also like to recall the sad experience of pumping weapons of individual states. Let me remind you that almost 80 billion (US dollars) worth of weapons were left in Afghanistan not so long ago. If we talk about Javelins, anti-tank missiles, then more than a hundred of them were left in Afghanistan. If we talk about MANPADS to combat aviation means, more than 150 of them were left,” the Russian Defence Minister said.

According to the head of the Russian military department, “all this, of course, poses a threat today, given that only recently the number of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan has doubled. And it is difficult for us to understand where and into which hands this weapon will fall. We would not like this topic to fade into the background. As is the topic of refugees from Afghanistan. As is the topic of drug trafficking from Afghanistan.”

According to Sergei Shoigu, “today we are seeing more and more concentration of attention, an transcendent concentration of attention on issues that, in our opinion, could be resolved quite calmly in a dialogue between all countries, without threats of imposing certain sanctions. Already, in my opinion, there are no words left in either English dictionaries or Russian that could denote these sanctions. And “catastrophic”, and “shocking”, and “destroying”. There are many different words,” stated the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation.

Sergei Shoigu also reminded Ben Wallace that today’s meeting of the heads of the military departments of Russia and the UK is the first in recent years.

“Unfortunately, the level of our cooperation is close to zero and is about to cross the zero meridian and go into the negative, which I really would not like. Therefore, I really hope for the opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues with you. Without any escalation and raising the temperature even higher in relations between Russia and the countries of the NATO bloc. And especially with Great Britain, taking into account the historical experience of our cooperation and combat cooperation,” the Russian Defence Minister said.

* * *

In turn, the head of the British military department, Ben Wallace, expressed readiness to discuss topical issues of international security with the Russian Defence Minister in order to reduce overall tension.

“We, as defence ministers, must be determined to fight the insecurity in our world. I hope that your speech today starts a relationship that was practically zero,” he said after Sergei Shoigu’s opening speech. —We can resolve several issues that you raised in your speech.”

The British minister said that during the meeting in Moscow he was ready to consider the issues raised by the Russian side in the draft documents in December last year.

“We can try to move forward, resolve our issues through diplomacy and other measures, as well as through general confidence—building measures,” Ben Wallace added.

He thanked for the willingness to meet at such an unstable time, “which does not benefit our peoples and does not eliminate such threats and challenges as terrorism.”

The British Defence Minister expressed hope to discuss issues of Ukraine, Afghanistan, as well as the fight against terrorism and other issues of mutual interest during the meeting.

“I hope that we will be able to influence the climate, the economy and migration, which could reduce the overall tension,” Ben Wallace said.

The British minister also said that he laid a wreath from the British government at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, stressing that he remembers the sacrifices that the Russian people suffered during the Second World War and other previous wars.

“I laid a wreath as a former soldier. I myself have seen many soldiers die next to me, and I would not want any other soldiers to die in the future, both in Europe and in other regions of the world,” Ben Wallace added.

---

Notes by Amarynth:  Whereas the Wallace presser is everywhere to be found on the internet, I have not managed to find any English translation of a presser by Mr Shoigu.

This looks like it is an attempt at another kaffeeklatsch because if Shoigu found anything real, one would think he would have said so.

Yesterday we saw a raft of countries withdrawing their embassies to the West of the Ukraine, or warning their staff and citizens to leave the Ukraine immediately.  This is but a partial list: Israel to evacuate families of diplomats in Kiev, Norwegian Foreign Ministry advises its citizens to leave Ukraine as soon as possible, Netherlands, moving diplomatic office from Kiev to the western Ukraine, Japan’s Foreign Ministry Advises all Citizens in Ukraine to Leave Immediately – raises threat level to maximum, South Korea banned any travel to the Ukraine.

Why is this important in this context?  The UK is withdrawing its military advisors, as well as its diplomatic staff.

” … UK defense minister James Heappey insisted that there will be no British troops in the country in the case of an invasion.

“All of them will be withdrawn,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There will be no British troops in Ukraine if there is to be a conflict there.

“They will be leaving over the course of the weekend.”

In addition, the news is just out that Russia is withdrawing diplomats from the Ukraine:  According to Zakharova, ”

We are making a conclusion that American and British colleagues are possibly aware of certain violent actions prepared in Ukraine that can seriously undermine security.”  Fearing possible provocations by Kiev or third countries, we have indeed made a decision about some optimization of the staff at our missions in Ukraine.”

Today Mr Putin will talk to Joe Biden and suddenly Antony Blinken has requested to hold a phone talk with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also today.  Lavrov agreed and this phone conversation will continue.

The NATOstan Clown Show

November 29, 2021

Flags wave ahead of a NATO Defence Ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, October 21, 2021. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol – RC28EQ9178EG

The charade has come to a point that – diplomatically – is quite unprecedented: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lost his Taoist patience.

Source

Independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist

By Pepe Escobar,

American hysteria over the “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine has exploded every geopolitical Stupid-o-Meter in sight – and that’s quite an accomplishment.

What a mess. Sections of the U.S. Deep State are in open revolt against the combo that remote controls Crash Test Dummy, who impersonates POTUS. The neocon-neoliberal axis is itching for a war – but has no idea how to sell it to an immensely fractured public opinion.

UKUS, which de facto controls the Five Eyes spy scam, excels only in propaganda. So in the end it’s up to the CIA/MI6 intel axis and their vast network of media chihuahuas to accelerate Fear and Loathing ad infinitum.

Russophobic U.S. Think Tankland would very much cherish a Russian “invasion”, out of the blue, and could not give a damn about the inevitable trouncing of Ukraine. The problem is the White House – and the Pentagon – must “intervene”, forcefully; otherwise that will represent a catastrophic loss of “credibility” for the Empire.

So what do these people want? They want to provoke Moscow by all means available to exercise “Russian aggression”, resulting in a lightning fast war that will be a highway to hell for Ukraine, but with zero casualties for NATO and the Pentagon.

Then the Empire of Chaos will blame Russia; unleash a tsunami of fresh sanctions, especially financial; and try to shut off all economic links between Russia and NATOstan.

Reality dictates that none of the above is going to happen.

All exponents of Russian leadership, starting with President Putin, have already made it clear, over and over again, what happens if the Ukro-dementials start a blitzkrieg over Donbass: Ukraine will be mercilessly smashed – and that applies not only to the ethno-fascist gang in Kiev. Ukraine will cease to exist as a state.

Defense Minister Shoigu, for his part, has staged all manner of not exactly soft persuasion, featuring Tu-22M3 bombers or Tu-160 White Swan bombers.

The inestimable Andrei Martyanov has conclusively explained, over and over again, that “NATO doesn’t have forces not only to ‘counter-act’ anything Russia does but even if it wanted to it still has no means to fight a war with Russia.”

Martyanov notes, “there is nothing in the U.S. arsenal now and in the foreseeable future which can intercept Mach=9-10+, let alone M=20-27, targets. That’s the issue. Same analytical method applies to a situation in 404. The only thing U.S. (NATO) can hope for is to somehow provoke Russia into the invasion of this shithole of a country and then get all SIGINT it can once Russia’s C4ISR gets into full combat mode.”

Translation: anything the Empire of Chaos and its NATO subsidiary try in Donbass, directly or indirectly, the humiliation will make the Afghanistan “withdrawal” look like a House of Gucci dinner party.

No one should expect clueless NATO puppets – starting with secretary-general Stoltenberg – to understand the military stakes. After all, these are the same puppets who have been building up a situation which might ultimately leave Moscow with a single, stark choice: be ready to fight a full scale hot war in Europe – which could become nuclear in a flash. And ready they are.

It’s all about Minsk

In a parallel reality, “meddling in 404” – a delightful Martyanov reference to a hellhole that is little more than a computer error – is a totally different story. That perfectly fits American juvenilia ethos.

At least some of the adults in selected rooms are talking. The CIA’s Burns went to Moscow to try to extract some assurance that in the event NATO Special Forces were caught in the cauldrons – Debaltsevo 2015-style – that the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, with Russian help, will concoct, they would be allowed to escape.

His interlocutor, Patrushev, told Burns – diplomatically – to get lost.

Chief of the General Staff, Gen Valery Gerasimov, had a phone call with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen Mark Milley, ostensibly to ensure, in Pentagonese, “risk-reduction and operational de-confliction”. No substantial details were leaked.

It remains to be seen how this “de-confliction” will happen in practice when Defense Minister Shoigu revealed U.S. nuclear-capable bombers have been practicing, in their sorties across Eastern Europe, “their ability to use nuclear weapons against Russia”. Shoigu discussed that in detail with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe: after all the Americans will certainly pull the same stunt against China.

The root cause of all this drama is stark: Kiev simply refuses to respect the February 2015 Minsk Agreement.

In a nutshell, the deal stipulated that Kiev should grant autonomy to Donbass via a constitutional amendment, referred to as “special status”; issue a general amnesty; and start a dialogue with the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Over the years, Kiev fulfilled exactly zero commitments – while the proverbial NATOstan media machine incessantly pounded global opinion with fake news, spinning that Russia was violating Minsk. Russia is not even mentioned in the agreement.

Moscow in fact always respected the Minsk Agreement – which translates as regarding Donbass as an integral, autonomous part of Ukraine. Moscow has zero interest in promoting regime change in Kiev.

This charade has come to a point that – diplomatically – is quite unprecedented: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lost his Taoist patience.

Lavrov was forced, under the circumstances, to publish 28 pages of correspondence between Moscow on one hand, and Berlin and Paris on the other, evolving around the preparation of a high-level meeting on Ukraine.

Moscow was in fact calling for one of the central points of the agreement to be implemented: a direct dialogue between Kiev and Donbass. Berlin and Paris said this was unacceptable. So yes: both, for all practical purposes, destroyed the Minsk Agreement. Public opinion across NATOstan has no idea whatsoever this actually happened.

Lavrov did not mince his words: “I am sure that you understand the necessity of this unconventional step, because it is a matter of conveying to the world community the truth about who is fulfilling, and how, the obligations under international law that have been agreed at the highest level.”

So it’s no wonder that the leadership in Moscow concluded it’s an absolute waste of time to talk to Berlin and Paris about Ukraine: they lied, cheated – and then blamed Russia. This “decision” at the EU level faithfully mirrors NATO’s campaign of stoking the flames of imminent “Russian aggression” against Ukraine.

Armchair warriors, unite!

Across NATOstan, the trademark stupidity of U.S. Think Tankland rules unabated, congregating countless acolytes spewing out the talking points of choice: “relentless Russian subversion”, “thug” Putin “intimidation” of Ukraine, Russians as “predators”, and everything now coupled with “power-hungry China’s war on Western values.”

Some Brit hack, in a twisted way, actually managed to sum up the overall impotence – and insignificance – by painting Europe as a victim, “a beleaguered democratic island in an anarchic world, which a rising tide of authoritarianism, impunity and international rule-breaking threatens to inundate”.

The answer by NATOstan Defense Ministers is to come up with a Strategic Compass – essentially an anti-Russia-China scam – complete with “rapid deployment forces”. Led by who, General Macron?

As it stands, poor NATOstan is uncontrollably sobbing, accusing those Russian hooligans – scary monsters, to quote David Bowie – of staging an anti-satellite missile test and thus “scorning European safety concerns”.

Something must have got lost in translation. So here’s what happened: Russia conclusively demonstrated it’s capable of obliterating each and every one of NATO’s satellites and blind “all their missiles, planes and ships, not to mention ground forces” in case they decide to materialize their warmongering ideas.

Obviously those deaf, dumb and blind NATOstan armchair warrior clowns – fresh from their Afghan “performance” – won’t get the message. But NATOstan anyway was never accused of being partial to reality.

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President Assad Holds a Lengthy Summit with President Putin in Moscow

 ARABI SOURI SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Syrian President Bashar Assad held a lengthy summit with the Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday, Monday, in Moscow, the summit lasted 90 minutes and the presidents were later joined by the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Faysal Mekdad and the Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu for an additional 45 minutes.

The visit was unannounced earlier due to security reasons, though it was planned for, President Bashar Assad is accompanied by a large delegate of Syrian officials.

At the reception, President Bashar Assad highlighted the joint cooperation between the Syrian and Russian states, peoples, and armed forces, in combating terrorism in Syria which also saves many innocent citizens around the world because ‘terrorism knows no political borders and does not stop at political borders,’ President Assad thanked Russia for its support and highlighted the negative work of countries that impose inhuman, immoral, and illegal siege against the Syrian people.

President Putin congratulated President Assad on the ‘well-deserved excellent results in the presidential elections,’ President Putin told President Assad that the Syrian people have high hopes in him, they ‘associate his name with restoring normal life in Syria,’ for the efforts President Assad is exerting in this regard.

‘We have delivered a blow to the terrorists and now the Syrian state controls more than 90% of the Syrian territories,’ President Putin added, he also highlighted the illegal presence of foreign forces in Syria who are uninvited and contradict the international law, hinting at both the US and Turkish forces without naming them.

The following is the video released by the Syrian Presidency with the full transcript in English:

The video is also on BitChute and YouTube.

The video transcript:

Thank you, Mr. President. I am glad that we meet today in Moscow. The joint anti-terrorist operation has been going on for nearly 6 years, during which the Syrian and Russian armies achieved great achievements, not only by liberating lands or by returning refugees to their villages and cities, but also by protecting many innocent citizens in this world because terrorism knows no political borders and does not stop at political borders.

Of course, in addition to the important results in the liberation of lands and the retreat of terrorists was the launch of the political process, whether in Sochi, Astana, or recently in Geneva. This process has been going on for about two years now, but as you know there are obstacles because there are countries that support terrorists and have no interest in continuing this process in the direction that achieves stability in Syria.

Some countries have imposed a siege on the Syrian people, which we describe as inhuman, immoral and illegal, nevertheless, we are determined in Syria, as a government, and as state institutions, to go in parallel in the process of liberating the territories and in the process of political dialogue.

Today’s visit is an important opportunity to discuss these two points in addition to the bilateral relations that a team of specialists in the two governments will follow up in parallel with our meeting.

I want to take advantage of this meeting in order to thank the Russian state and the Russian people for the humanitarian aid provided to the Syrian people, whether with regard to the Corona pandemic recently or with regard to securing all the basic necessities that the Syrian citizen requires in his daily life.

I would like to thank you and the Russian political establishment, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the efforts they made in international forums to defend international law, which at the outset states the sovereignty of states and the right of peoples to determine their future and destiny which managed effectively and strongly to prevent the exploitation of the process of combating terrorism in the world for political goals that serve the agendas of some countries.

Once again, thank you, Mr. President.

Honorable President, I am pleased to welcome you again to Moscow,

First, I would like to congratulate you on your birthday, and I also congratulate you personally on your well-deserved victory with an excellent result in the presidential elections, these results prove that people trust you, despite the difficulties and complications that Syria has gone through in the previous period, people associate your name with restoring normal life to Syria, which you are working hard to achieve including arranging the course of dialogue between you and your political opponents, and we hope that this process will continue.

Achieving this kind of synergy between all Syrian political forces will enable us to move forward in order to achieve a better future for the Syrians, many steps have been taken to achieve this, and thanks to our joint efforts, the largest part of the Syrian territory has been liberated despite all the difficulties and tragedies, and thanks to these efforts, the Syrian government today controls more than 90% of the territory.

The problem was the presence of some foreign armed forces on Syrian territory, in contradiction to all international references, and without permission from the Syrian government, which of course contradicts all international laws.

This gives you the possibility to make the maximum possible efforts to unite all the forces of the country to control the entire Syrian territory, as well as the possibility to reconstruct Syria as much as you can, in the absence of any armed forces in the Syrian territory.

But at the same time, unfortunately, we are still witnessing some actions by terrorists who not only control some lands, but also spread terror among the people.

The liberated areas are also witnessing the return of refugees, and I visited Syria with your kind invitation and witnessed with my own eyes how people return to their homes and rebuild their homes and work actively and energetically to return to normal life.

Our joint efforts are not limited to humanitarian assistance only, but also contribute to the development of economic and trade relations. During the past year, the volume of trade exchange increased by three and a half times.

At the same time, we are working together to get rid of the basic problem facing humanity, and I mean combating the Corona pandemic, we witnessed the supply of the first shipments of the Sputnik (7) and Sputnik Lite vaccines to Syria, we hope that, with our joint efforts, we will succeed in helping the Syrian people get back on their feet in the face of all these problems, including the reconstruction of the Syrian economy, social life and the health field.

Once again, I am pleased to welcome you, Mr. President. Welcome.

End of the transcript.

Russia Affirms its Support to Syria Economically, Politically, and Militarily

https://syrianews.cc/russia-affirms-its-support-to-syria-economically-politically-and-militarily/embed/#?secret=Ftd1XhBwWM

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So Who Wants a Hot War?

April 17, 2021 

by Pepe Escobar and cross-posted with Strategic Culture Foundation

It’s not by accident that the Hegemon is going no holds barred to harass and try to smash Eurasian integration by all means available.

It’s a scorpion battle inside a vortex of distorted mirrors inside a circus. So let’s start with the mirrors in the circus.

The non-entity that passes for Ukrainian Foreign Minister traveled to Brussels to be courted by US Secretary of State Blinken and NATO secretary-general Stoltenberg.

At best, that’s circus shadowplay. Much more than NATO advisers in a frantic revolving door in Kiev, the real shadowplay is MI6 actually working very close with President Zelensky.

Zelensky’s warmongering script comes directly from MI6’s Richard Moore. Russian intel is very much aware of all the fine print. Glimpses were even carefully leaked to a TV special on the Rossiya 1 channel.

I confirmed it with diplomatic sources in Brussels. British media also got wind of it – but obviously was told to further distort the mirrors, blaming everything on, what else, “Russian aggression”.

German intel is practically non-existent in Kiev. Those NATO advisers remain legion. Yet no one talks about the explosive MI6 connection.

Careless whispers in Brussels corridors swear that MI6 actually believes that in the case of a volcanic but as it stands still preventable hot war with Russia, continental Europe would burn and Brexitland would be spared.

Dream on. Now back to the circus.

Oh, you’re so provocative

Both Little Blinken and NATO straw man Stoltenberg parroted the same script in Brussels after talking to the Ukrainian Foreign Minister.

That was part of a NATO “special meeting” on Ukraine – where some Eurocrat must have told a bunch of extra clueless Eurocrats how they would be carbonized on the spot by Russian TOS-1 Buratino’s terrifying explosive warheads if NATO tried anything funny.

Listen to the sound of Blinken yappin’: Russian actions are “provocative”.

Well, his staff certainly did not hand him a copy of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu examining step by step the deployment of the annual US Army DEFENDER-Europe 21: “The main forces are concentrated in the Black Sea and Baltic region.”

Now listen to the sound of Stoltenberg yappin’: We pledge “unwavering support” to Ukraine.

Woof woof. Now go back to play in your sandboxes.

No, not yet. Little Blinken threatened Moscow with “consequences” whatever happens in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov’s infinite patience is nearly Daoist. Sun Tzu’s Art of War, by the way, is a Daoist masterpiece. Peskov’s answer to Blinken: “It is simply not necessary for us to go around forever proclaiming: ‘I am the greatest!’ The more one does this sort of thing, in fact, the more people doubt it…”

When in doubt, call the irreplaceable Andrei Martyanov – who always tells it like it is. The Crash Test Dummy gang in D.C. still does not get it – although some Deep State pros do.

Here’s Martyanov:

As I am on record constantly – the United States never fought a war with its Command and Control system under the relentless sustained fire impact and its rear attacked and disorganized. Conventionally, the United States cannot win against Russia in Europe, at least Eastern part of it and Biden Admin better wake up to the reality that it may, indeed, not survive any kind of escalation and, in fact, modern Kalibrs, 3M14Ms, as a matter of fact, have a range of a 4,500 kilometers, as well as 5,000+ kilometer range of X-101 cruise missiles, which will have no issues with penetrating North American airspace when launched by Russia’s strategic bombers without even leaving the safety of Russia’s airspace.

The Patrushev effect

The circus went on with the phone call from “Biden” – that is, Crash Test Dummy with an earpiece and a teleprompter in front of the phone – to President Putin.

Call it the Patrushev effect.

In his stunning interview to Kommersant, Triple Yoda Patrushev mentioned a very civilized late March phone call he had with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Of course there’s no smokin’ gun, but if anyone would come up with the face-saving idea of a Biden-Putin phone call that would have been Sullivan.

The spin from Washington and Moscow is only slightly divergent. The Americans highlight that “Biden” – actually the deciding combo behind him – wants to build “a stable and predictable relationship with Russia, consistent with US interests.”

The Kremlin said that Biden “expressed interest in normalizing bilateral relations.”

Away from all this fog, what really matters is Patrushev-Sullivan. That has to do with Washington telling Turkey that US warships would be transiting the Bosphorus towards the Black Sea. Sullivan must have told Patrushev that no, they won’t be “active” in Donbass. And Patrushev told Sullivan, OK, we won’t incinerate them.

There are absolutely no illusions in Moscow that this putative Biden-Putin summit in a distant future will ever take place. Especially after Daoist Peskov had made it very clear that “no one will allow America to speak with Russia from a position of strength.” If that sounds like a line straight out of Yang Jiechi – who made shark fin’s soup out of Blinken-Sullivan in Alaska – that’s because it does.

Kiev, predictably, remains stuck in circus mode. After getting sharp messages from Mr. Iskander, Mr. Khinzal and Mr. Buratino, they changed their mind, or at least pretend to, and are now saying they don’t want war.

And here comes the intersection between circus and the serious stuff. The “Biden” combo never said, explicitly, on the record, that they don’t want war. On the contrary: they are sending those warships to the Black Sea and – circus again! – designating an envoy, Ministry of Silly Walks-style, whose only job is to derail the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

So the cliffhanger – like a teaser for Snowpiercer – is what happens when Nord Stream 2 is completed.

But before that, there’s something even more momentous: next Wednesday, on his speech to the Russian Security Council, President Putin will lay down the law.

It’s Minsk 2, stupid

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has struck a much less Daoist note than Peskov: “The United States is our enemy, doing everything to undermine Russia’s position in the international arena, we do not see other elements in their approach to us. These are our conclusions”.

That’s stone to the bone realpolitik. Ryabkov knows the Hegemon’s “non agreement-capable” mindset inside out. So an added dimension to his observation is its direct connection to the only solution for Ukraine: the Minsk 2 agreements.

Putin reiterated Minsk 2 on his live teleconference with Merkel and Macron – and certainly to “Biden” in their phone call. The Beltway, the EU and NATO are all aware of it. Minsk 2 was signed by Ukraine, France and Germany and certified by the UN Security Council. If Kiev violates it, Russia – as a member of the UNSC – must enforce it.

Kiev has been violating Minsk 2 for months now; it refuses to implement it. As a faithful Hegemon satrapy, they are also not “agreement-capable”. Yet now they are seeing the – firepower – writing on the wall if they as much as think of starting a blitzkrieg against Donbass.

The open secret in the whole Ukraine/Donbass wilderness of mirrors under the circus tent is of course China. Yet Ukraine, in a sane world, would not only be part of a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) corridor, but also part of the Russian Greater Eurasia project. China specialist Nikolai Vavilov recognizes the importance of BRI, but is also certain Russia is above all defending its own interests.

Ideally, Ukraine/Donbass would be inserted in the overall revival of the Silk Roads – as in internal Central Eurasian trade based and developed taking into consideration Eurasia-wide demand. Eurasia integration – in both the Chinese and Russian vision – are all about interconnected economies via inter-regional trade.

So it’s not by accident that the Hegemon – on the verge of becoming an irrelevant player across Eurasia – is going no holds barred to harass and try to smash the continental integration by all means available.

In this context, manipulating a failed state to meet its own doom is just (circus) business.